On Saturday, September 17, our Speech and Debate Team novices competed in the Ria Shah Novice Tournament, honoring the late Ria Shah, at Hoover High School. They participated in three different types of events–Individual Events (speech), Lincoln-Douglas debate, and Public Forum debate. The teams have spent the past few weeks preparing with their novices for the first tournament of the year. Speeches were written and rehearsed, debate cases cut, and blockfiles prepared. In-class preparation with Mr. Conoly also included lectures, recitations, and practice rounds.
The night before the Novice Tournament, each of the three teams hosted their own Novice Night, an annual tradition in which teams get together at a teammate's house to have fun, eat, and prepare novices for the upcoming competition until late at night.
Every one of our team's novices arrived at Hoover early Saturday morning ready to win. Many of our JV and varsity debaters also spent their day at the tournament judging rounds and supporting the team.
Teams from all over the state showed up to compete. Hundreds of speakers and debaters came from schools including Auburn, Altamont, Montgomery, Mountain Brook, JCIB, Oak Mountain High, Hoover, and many others. Obviously, there was sizable competition!
After a quick assembly, our competitors and judges dove straight into their rounds.
Novices in speech competed in events including Original Oratory, Informative Speaking, Humorous Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, Extemporaneous Speaking, and Impromptu.
Meanwhile, our Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum debaters competed in five rounds each. Many distinctions set these two types of debate apart from one another, but a simple difference between the two is that PF competes in pairs, while LD is one-on-one.
After almost seven hours of speaking and debating, the awards ceremony finally began. Our novices did extremely well in their events! Here are a few of the impressive results:
Speech
Ellie Hoar - 1st in Impromptu and 2nd in Dramatic Interpretation
McKenzie Ormond - 1st in Humorous Interpretation
Maryam Kazamel - 1st in Extemporaneous Speaking and 4th in Impromptu
Vincent Lin - 4th in Original Oratory
Izzy Marsh - 2nd in Informative
Lilly Tector - 5th in Impromptu
Public Forum
Avery Brooks & Caitlyn Webster-Roberts - 1st
Evelyn Kutny & Mina Hu - 6th
Lincoln-Douglas
Ethan Schmidt - 2nd
Justin Zou - 3rd
Also, none of the Vestavia LDers lost more than a single round throughout the day!
Congratulations to all of our novices for such a huge success at their first-ever tournament. We are so proud of them, and we are so excited to see them grow throughout the year!
Comments