By: Ethan Chow
12/23/21
Do you like to write speeches and defend them? If yes, the speech and debate team is the right group for you. The team adviser is Mr. Rob Miller, who is also a seventh and eighth grade English teacher on campus. The Speech and Debate team started their season with an enormous success at their first tournament, the Wolpert-Gawron Invitational. This tournament took place Saturday, October 30th, 2021. There were three qualifying rounds that started in the morning for each event, and after the results were shown, a final round took place in the afternoon. This tournament was for all grade levels and anyone who was interested in speech and debate could have participated. The favorite event for the students was SPAR. Speech and debate member Alexander Mellis loves SPAR because, “It is short and fast-paced, but it offers a fulfilling debate.” In storytelling, you have to demonstrate a story through a speech and actions, commonly for children. Our Associated Student Body president Bradley Wong managed to take second place in storytelling out of twenty participants, all from different schools or academies. He placed second, first, then second in all of the qualifying rounds. In open SPAR, seventh grader Devina Pathak placed twelfth out of thirty-four participants, the largest event of the tournament. She placed fourth, first, and third in her qualifying rounds. All of our other participants had a fantastic time at their respective events. “During the speech and debate tournament, I met a lot of new people and had fun,” Britton Wang said. The next speech tournament is on December 11, and will end on December 13. Students participating in the next speech and debate tournament will be able to compete in many new events, only appearing in certain tournaments. Currently, the speech and debate team has fifty-five members, so you are sure not to be alone. Meetings take place after school on Fridays, where you are allowed to practice with all of your friends. According to nfhs.org, speech and debate can provide students an opportunity to develop or improve critical thinking, persuasion, and research skills. The speech and debate team is a way for students to support HMS, and learn life skills.
