Dear Speech and Debate Family,
Welcome back to the Stuyvesant Speech & Debate team weekly update! Over the weekend, 54 of our students participated in a highly anticipated in-person national tournament hosted at Harvard. Our team did exceptionally well, and we’re very proud of everyone who participated!
This email does not include all the team pictures, so if you would like to see more, you can find all of them at the bottom of the home page of our website. You can also find all the weekly updates, tournament schedules, permission slips/forms, and the donation page on our website as well.
There will be an important request at the bottom of this email, so please keep on reading until the end. Thank you for your continued support, and we hope you enjoy the rest of our update!
Team Updates
Public Forum:
STUYVESANT PUBLIC FORUM SWEEPS HARVARD!!!
Freshmen Jasmine Liang and Solomon Binyaminov CHAMPIONED the novice division! Benjamin Yarden and Eric Liu made it to the quarter-finals! Shoutout to Benjamin and Eric for taking home sixth and tenth-place speaker awards respectively.
Sophomores Helen Mancini and Astrid Harrington CHAMPIONED the junior varsity division! Alexander Panas and Brandon Tung made it to the quarter-finals! Shoutout to Helen and Astrid for taking home FIRST and third-place speaker awards respectively.
In varsity, juniors Amrisha Roy and Kikyo Makino-Siller advanced to quads and did an excellent job supporting and prepping out the novices and JV. Congratulations to the public forum team for an outstanding performance at Harvard!
Policy:
Policy had a great weekend competing at Harvard! Our team did excellent, with Stuyvesant KS (Rahul Kissoon and Kassandra Sinchi) advancing all the way to the novice semi-finals! Special shout out to Kassandra, who debated alone on Monday when Rahul got sick. Stuyvesant VZ (Aruna Vaithilingam & Ziying Zhang) and Stuyvesant CD (Amrit Das & Vincent Chen) also broke to double octo-finals in the novice division, and Stuyvesant BF (Salioudian Barry & Atiya Firooz) broke to quarter-finals in the junior varsity division. In addition to multiple elimination round advances, Policy also swept speaker awards. In the novice division, Ziying was 18th, Kassandra was 14th, Rahul was 11th, and Aruna was 5th speaker! In the junior varsity division, Atiya was 13th speaker, and Salioudian won 1ST SPEAKER! Huge congratulations to the whole team, and thank you to our wonderful judges Emmanuel, Zara, and Ms. Choi!
Lincoln Douglas:
LD went to Harvard! Our novices worked hard to prepare for this tournament and had a blast! Galvin went 3-3, while Yuna and Lixin had a lot of fun getting debate experience! Daniel was also a triple octo-finalist in varsity LD! Besides competing, we bonded over team dinners at iHop, received a tour of Harvard from former captain Maxwell Zen, and created a team vlog! We look forward to upcoming tournaments at Grands and States!
Congress:
Last weekend, Stuy Congress brought juniors William Tang, Olivia Woo, and Pulindu Weerasekara and sophomores Jiawen Lin, Daniel Prizant, and Matthew Dong to Harvard! The team did amazing, with William advancing to the quarter-finals and earning his second and final bid to the Tournament of Champions! Aside from the standard late-night prep sessions and competing, there was also much piano playing and team bonding over dinners in Harvard Square. This tournament was an amazing end to our regular debate season, and after a short mid-winter break, Stuy Congress will soon be preparing for out-season tournaments such as the Grands NCFL qualifiers and the NYSFL state tournament!
Speech:
This weekend, Speech had a wonderful time competing at the Harvard national tournament! In Original Oratory, Eshaal Ubaid made Double Octofinals, and speakers Melia Moore, Arshia Mazumder, and Ethan Khosh did great in the preliminary rounds. Thank you to everyone for making this possible, and we can’t wait for States and Grands!
Extemp:
At Harvard this weekend, Extemp (Aleksey O., Ashley L., Eshaal U., Isaac H., Justin H., Kai L., Mason N., Myles V., Unique Z.) went up against the toughest competitors on the circuit. We did great and held up against this competition. Eshaal advanced to the quarter-finals and placed 19th in a pool of 262. Unique was 4 spots from breaking. Our two underclassmen did PHENOMENALLY, placing in the upper half of the prelim pool. We also loved watching the final rounds to improve and grow our own speeches. Go extemp!
Parliamentary:
Parli has been preparing for the upcoming Ivy League Parliamentary Debate Championships and NYDPL March tournaments. This week, in addition to practice rounds, our coach Rodda came to deliver a lecture on the nature of popular culture and related topics in debate. We look forward to upcoming tournaments in March!
Donations
Participating in tournaments is crucial for Stuyvesant Speech & Debate team's speakers and debaters. These events not only provide students with a platform to showcase their skills and talents, but they also serve as an opportunity for them to gain crucial life skills such as effective communication, organization, and teamwork. The experiences gained from these competitions are invaluable and can have a lasting impact on our students' lives.
However, organizing and attending tournaments is not without its challenges. The Stuyvesant Speech & Debate team relies heavily on the generosity of parents, alumni, and friends to cover the costs of fees, transportation, and stay. Your support is crucial in determining how many students we can send to tournaments and how many tournaments we can go to. By donating to our team, you are investing in the growth and development of our students, and we cannot thank you enough for your support.
Please consider contributing to our team to help provide our students with the best opportunities to learn and succeed. If you are able to, we would greatly appreciate a donation to our team, no matter how big or small. Your support will go a long way in helping us make a meaningful difference in the lives of our students. Thank you for your continued support of the Stuyvesant Speech & Debate team.
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.
If you have any questions or would like to provide feedback, don't hesitate to reach out to us by responding to this email or contacting stuy4n6@gmail.com. We will make sure to get back to you as soon as possible.
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