Dear Speech and Debate Family,
Welcome back to the Stuy Speech and Debate update! Last month, we hosted the NYCFL Grands Nationals Qualifying Tournament at Stuy, and it was a tremendous success both competitively and organizationally. The Stuyvesant Speech & Debate team earned 17 total qualifications for Grand Nationals, the most of any school in our league. In addition, over 80 team members volunteered their time and effort, generously preparing and serving home-cooked food for competitors and judges. A big thank you to all Stuy judges, volunteers, and parents, and a huge congratulations to all competitors!
As a reminder, you can find all the team pictures, updates, tournament schedule, permission slips/forms, and donation page on our website. Thank you for being a part of the Stuyvesant Speech & Debate family!
Team Updates
Extemp:
The Extemp team, represented by seniors Eshaal Ubaid, Aleksey Olkhovenko, and Kai Li, had a fantastic performance at Grands. Eshaal championed (with straight 1s in prelims), Aleksey placed 6th, and Kai was one away from advancing to finals. Both Eshaal and Aleksey are headed to Chicago for the Catholic Forensics League National Tournament! Eshaal was also awarded the Sr. Raimonde Memorial Scholarship in Speech from the NYCFL for her leadership and dedication. The extempers are also gearing up and practicing hard for the state championships in April. We are all so proud and excited to see Stuy Extemp represented!
Public Forum:
Public Forum did amazing at Grands with special congratulations to juniors Helen Mancini and Astrid Harrington for placing 2nd and qualifying to Nationals! We’re also extremely grateful for the non-competitor volunteers for helping run Grands smoothly.
Congress:
Stuy Congress performed well at Grands! All three competitors: junior Jia Lin, senior Sarah Diaz, and senior William Tang advanced to the final round! Sarah Diaz placed 7th as the alternate qualifier to the National Grands tournament, and William Tang got a podium finish of 3rd place, qualifying him to the National Grands tournament in Chicago! We also want to give a big thanks to those who volunteered their time to make sure that this event was able to run smoothly! Shoutout to sophomores Sion Park, Timothy Louie, Raymond Chen, and Lauren Zagarov, juniors Yoonha Shim, and Daniel Prizant, and senior Olivia Woo for volunteering!
Lincoln Douglas:
LD had an amazing time at Grands! Senior Henry Ji and juniors Daniel Zheng and Princeden Hom placed 4th, 5th, and 6th respectively, securing their qualifications for the Grand Nationals tournament in May! Sophomore Yuna Lee also had a strong showing, picking up three ballots in a highly competitive pool. All of our debaters did extremely well, and we’re excited to see them off to Chicago!
Policy & Parli:
On March 16th, Stuy hosted NYCFL Grands, where many Policy and Parli team members volunteered. Volunteers served handmade food, guided debaters to their rooms, and helped run the tournament. Congratulations to all our qualifiers!
Speech:
Speech did incredibly well at the NYC Grand Tournament, championing the Speech Sweepstakes and qualifying 7 entries for the National Tournament in Chicago.
Enormous congratulations to our qualifiers: Sophomore Amanda Greenberg in Declamation, senior Ethan Khosh and sophomore Audrey Hilger in Dramatic Performance, senior Erica Liu and junior Renae Leung in Oral Interpretation, and juniors Eli Lifton and Ethan Ma in Original Oratory. Freshmen Micah Beirne and Kevin Lin are the alternates in Duo Interpretation, and are lined up for Nationals as well.
Another huge thanks goes out to all our non-competing teammates, the dozens of whom made the tournament happen by bringing and serving food, helping to time rounds, run messages, act as tour guides, and more.
This was an incredibly successful tournament, and winning the Speech Sweepstakes is a massive team win (including Extemp)! Congratulations again to our qualifiers, and we look forward to Nationals over Memorial Day Weekend!
Thank you for taking the time to read this update! We hope you found it informative and enjoyable. If you liked this update, please consider sharing it with your friends and family who may also be interested.
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