Newman Students Qualify for National Speech & Debate Tournament

[FULL STORY]

 

 

The Speech and Debate Team hosted and competed in the Louisiana District Tournament for the National Speech and Debate Association. The Association is divided into 110 districts around the country. Each district is responsible for conducting a tournament to identify who should represent that district at the National Speech and Debate Tournament. To qualify for Nationals, one must place first or second in one of the 12 categories. We enjoyed the following results:

 

Laura Arenas – 5th place – Informative Speaking

James Xiang – 5th place – International Extemporaneous Speaking

Royden Lynch – 4th place – US Extemporaneous Speaking

Avni Shridhar – 4th place – Informative Speaking

Rajan Agrawal – 4th place – International Extemporaneous Speaking

Kevin Fitzmorris and Kayvan Khoobehi – 3rd place – Policy Debate

Avni Shridhar – 3rd place – Lincoln Douglas Debate

Shuzheng Zheng – 3rd place – International Extemporaneous Speaking

 

Rajan Agrawal and Royden Lynch – Policy Debate

James Xiang and Shuzheng Zheng – Policy Debate

Max Kanner – Lincoln Douglas Debate

Laura Arenas – US Extemporaneous Speaking

Claire Rufin – Humorous Interpretation

Kevin Qi – Congressional Debate

 

Thirty-two students in Louisiana are national qualifiers, and seven of them are Newman Greenies. They will proudly represent our School and our state at the National Tournament, to be held June 19-24 in Birmingham, Alabama. This year will be the 26th time in school history that we have at least one qualifier to the tournament.

 

There were some additional honors given to the team or school.

Speech events – 2nd Most Outstanding School

Debate events – Most Outstanding School

Overall – Most Outstanding School

 

Finally, the NSDA honors one school each year with the Leading Chapter Award. It’s the result of accumulating the number of members and degrees in the Association earned over the years. Each year’s total is added to the previous year’s total. The school with the highest total is named the Leading Chapter. Once the school wins, its total is reset to 0. Newman was named the Leading Chapter in 1993, for the accumulated total of members and degrees from 1978 to 1993. We won it again in 2017. This is a reflection of decades of support from the Newman community.

 

Thank you for your support of the team’s efforts, and now it’s on to State (Mar 23-25), the National Tournament of Champions (April 29-May 1), and the National Speech and Debate Tournament (June 18-25).