Last weekend, the Mitty Speech & Debate team competed at 26th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Invitational at James Logan High School. The week leading up to the tournament was filled with nothing short of fantastic blitzes and potlucks, with food provided by all class periods!
Period 1 was first up for the week!
Period 8: Breakfast for Dinner. They strove for perfection and landed on EGGcellence!
On Friday, the tournament began! While the speech kids were at Mitty blitzing during their day off from school, the debaters rolled up to James Logan ready to compete in their first few preliminary rounds.
On Saturday, speech came in! Everyone started the day with time checks and pump up circles.
Cassie didn't seem to get the memo...
After competing in our first couple prelim rounds, the team decided to take a break to do something fun...Life Boat: MSD Style! It got a little hectic when Conor body checked a few people to get into groups, but hey, competing is what we do best!
Teams that play Life Boat together win together! (And yes, Liv is in fact a vampire).
After that really intense game, a few of us were feeling pretty tired and needed some rest before breaks to quarters came out...
Mr. Cruz joining 3/Super 6 for a quick nap
Everyone was fully energized by the time breaks came out though, because that evening, we advanced 45 entries to the quarterfinal round of competition in speech and 4 teams to the octofinal round of competition in debate! A successful MLK Saturday to say the least.
Our Policy, Public Forum, and Parli teams ready for an exciting MLK Sunday.
The following day, advancing speech kids arrived on campus ready to compete in their semifinal round. They started the day reflecting on why their piece is important.
Just before sending our competitors off into their semifinal round, alumni Ismail Shaik had a few words of advice to share with everyone...
While waiting for breaks to the final round, the students hung out with each other and had a bite to eat of some amazing food provided by our parents. A HUGE thank you to all our parents who spent the weekend judging and filling our Mitty tables with delicious food! We wouldn't be able to do what we love without you!
Breakfast essentials galore
Taco bell, pizzas, salad, wraps, sandwiches! YUM!
Now would be a good time to introduce some of our events competing at this tournament (debate was in the middle of killing their rounds during this time)! The team got pretty creative trying to come up with ways to represent their events.
Soon after, finals breaks came out. We had 10 speech entires advance to the final round, and we found out that both our Public Forum and Policy teams would be going into their quarterfinal round of competition in debate! Congrats!
Congrats to our finalists (missing Koji and Charlie; they were a little busy competing in the other event they advanced in!)
Supporting our 3 OPP finalists!!
After amazing final rounds, it came time for awards!
Thank you to James Logan High School for hosting a phenomenal tournament!
As a whole, our students killed the game! Let's take a look at how they did:
Co-champions, Policy Debate - Akaash Tawade/ Charlie Pyle
1st place, Public Forum Debate - Koji Flynn-Do/ Jolie Leung
1st place, Duo Interpretation - Max Slade/ Olivia Monroy
1st place, Original Prose & Poetry - Arjun Biju
1st place, Humorous Interpretation - Arjun Biju
2nd place, Original Advocacy - Darya Kaviani
3rd place, Original Prose & Poetry - Pranavi Javangula
4th place, Impromptu - Koji Flynn-Do
4th place, National Extemporaneous - Charlie Pyle
5th place, Original Prose & Poetry - Cassie Korb
6th place, Thematic Interpretation - Nkem Nnam
7th place, Oratorical Interpretation - Anna Krause
In addition, 21 quarterfinalists (Piper Lewis, Shanaya Sales, Amelia Whitney, Giuliano Orsi, Caity Redfern, Sameer Keswani/ Nick Maranowski, Emma Skeet, Elizabeth Mau, Nava Tamjidi, Draigh Ricketson, Cailey Larmore, Jolie Leung, Keili Fitzgerald, Vedant Vamshidhar, Kritika Yerrapotu, Madelyn Whalen, Akaash Tawade, Mukil Pari, Siddhant Gannu, Ammar Syed, and Siddhant Gannu), 9 semifinalists (Riya Dhoopar, Olivia Monroy, Esha Bhatia/ Pranavi Javangula, Piper Lewis, Anna Wymbs, Sanika Mauskar, Akaash Tawade, Roshni Varma, Rahul Ramakrishnan, Eshan Gupta) and 3 debate octofinalists (Ana Gonzalvez/ Mayank Killedar Vardhaan Ambati/ Prahlad Anand, Varun Joshi/ Nabeel Shaikh).
Just before announcing the winner of the Large School sweepstakes award, Mr. Tommie Lindsey eloquently expressed the importance of the Martin Luther King Jr. tournament, reminding us to continue using our voices for good .
As the top 5 schools for sweepstakes were being announced, Mitty students gripped each other's hands in anticipation of taking home our second 1st place MLK plaque. Long story short, Mitty was announced as 2nd place to Bellarmine, but after a recount of the points later that night, we found out that the official results showed that we won! A huge congratulations to our students, parents, and coaches on this wonderful victory. The amount of support and love that spread throughout the weekend is what everyone should be most proud of. Thank you everyone, and good luck for the upcoming semester!
One big happy Pham