by Brandon Spars, Head Coach Speech & Debate

This past weekend, after two weeks of riveting intersession trips, thirty students left on the big bus to head down to Union City, where they jumped into battle with more than three thousand competitors from around the country. There were more than one hundred competitors in almost every event, and to break meant making a very brutal cut. 

 

It should come as no surprise that our two star teams, Jack Greenberg '16 & Liam Kolling '16, and Sierra Maciorowski '15 & Logan Noel '15, broke to Double Octos. And again, on to Octos they both went. In spite of some valiant debating of a difficult resolution, both teams fell here and ended their run on Sunday morning. 

 

This past weekend featured the long awaited debut of "The Wizard of Oz," the duo performed by speech captains Robert Webber '15 and Olivia Smith '15. It was great to walk down one of the long James Logan HS hallways and hear Robert's golden voice ringing from one of the classrooms. The piece was an immediate hit, and it made the tough cut into quarterfinals. There, Robert and Olivia found themselves in the company of James Logan's finest. Some of these students don't compete in the regular league tournaments, spending most of their weekends on the national circuit. Olivia told me that one young woman's voice was so rich and resonant that it made her skin prickle. Robert was impressed with a performance of "The Color Purple" that Logan is featuring this year. What is really amazing is that as impressed as Robert and Olivia were, I had to remind them that they belonged in this small group of talented students. They didn't break to semis, but they were close. Not bad for an opening performance. 

 

Ian Hartley '15 continues to excel in his newfound arena. He double-entered in impromptu and what I refer to as the electrical engineering of speech -- extemporaneous. In this event, Ian is given a question related to current news and politics. He has one half an hour to prepare a seven minute speech, which answers the question while making reference to five or six current, reputable news sources. While most would shy from the high stress of both impromptu and extemporaneous speaking, Ian seems to thrive on it. He broke in both, but eventually fell in quarter finals. 

 

We returned, even more exhausted than Friday, on Sunday afternoon, and thankfully had a day to prepare ourselves for the new semester. While we had some sparks in speech and debate, the general mood was of mild disappointment. I think that is indicative of how much our expectations have risen over the past year. I had to remind myself that if we had made Octos in debate and quarters in speech two years ago, we would have been over the moon. Now it is normal for us to do this and more at tournaments. 

 

I want to thank the bus drivers, Dusty Allen and Roy Hogle, for adding to their schedules to drive us down and back to and from the South Bay. I also want to thank parent judges, Lars Tandrup, Donna Hendrickson, Anne Tamar-Mattis, Irwin Keller, Heidi Griffin, and especially Justin Kornfein, who not only judges all three days, but also drove a van to and from the tournament. It was also wonderful to have alumnae Morgan Apostle '14 and Sydney Weil '14, who chaperoned and judged at this tournament. Marco Morrone took a weekend out of his life to come with his two children Huck and Milo to help keep order in the Crowne Plaza. We could not have been at this tournament with this many students without the participation of all of these parents, faculty, relatives, and friends.