Last weekend, the Archbishop Mitty Speech and Debate Team began their 2017-2018 season with a trip to Long Beach to compete at the nationally recognized Jack Howe Memorial Invitational. With 54 students on the trip, this marked the largest group ever to attend a speech and debate travel tournament. Following two weeks of blitzes with countless practice rounds and time checks, the students came together as a group to partake in an evening of skits and friendly competition.
Friday afternoon came and we were off to SoCal! During the 8 hour bus ride, students played games, finished up their cases and put final touches on their pieces.
After a lunch on the road and a pizza party late night at the hotel, we gathered in the lobby to receive our first set of tangible metaphors from our teammates. After a quick motivational talk from Mrs. Cruz, we all went to bed, ready for an exciting first day of competition.
Early Saturday morning, the 27 debaters assembled in the lobby to make it to their early 8AM round. Speech members wished the debaters good luck as they left and began getting ready for their later start time at noon. Of course through all of this, we didn’t forget to take pictures!
After an exhausting day, with 5 rounds for every debate event and 3 preliminary rounds for every speech event, the competitors returned to the hotel anxiously waiting for breaks to be revealed. The results were in! MSD had 27 speech students advance to the semifinal round!!
Early Sunday morning, the debaters competed in their 6th preliminary round. Following this round, Public Forum had 3 teams break to Double Octofinals (Top 32 teams) and Parliamentary Debate had ALL FOUR TEAMS break straight to octofinals. (Top 16 Teams). Amazing job to all the debaters!
Following a tough semifinal round the speech pool narrowed from the top 14 to the top 7. Of the 27 students that made it to semifinals, we had 16 students break to the final round of competition!
After one more final round in speech, it was time for awards! Congratulations to the following students who were recognized at the awards ceremony:
PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Rahul Ramakrishnan & Vedant Vamshidhar (Semi Finalist Team)
Aayush Sutaria & Anish Patel (Octofinalist Team)
Jon Telebrico & Mayank Killedar (Octofinalist Team)
Helena Getayalew & Roksana Gorgolewski (Octofinalist Team)
2nd Best Speaker - Aayush Sutaria
6th Best Speaker - Helena Getayalew
PUBLIC FORUM DEBATE
Mukil Pari & Tushar Agashe (Quarter Finalist Team)
Shriya Nandwani & Amit Ahluwalia (Double Octofinalist Team)
Amun Asnani & Saumil Thakore (Double Octofinalist Team)
5th Best Speaker - Mukil Pari
DRAMATIC INTERP
Amelia Whitney (2nd)
Conor Sherry (5th)
Shanaya Sales (Semi Finalist)
Maddie Davis (Semi Finalist)
Max Slade (Semi Finalist)
DUO INTERP
**Conor Sherry & Amelia Whitney (1st)**
Maddie Davis & Shanaya Sales (2nd)
Naman Dandia & Julian Sanghvi (6th)
Jake Ledger & Liv Monroy (Semi Finalist)
Keili Fitzgerald & Suroor Nakhoda (Semi Finalist)
EXPOSITORY SPEAKING
Maddie Whalen (2nd)
Kritika Yerrapotu (3rd)
Riya Dhoopar (5th)
Priya Ravi (6th)
Keili Fitzgerald (7th)
HUMOROUS INTERP
Liv Monroy (3rd)
Emma Skeet (4th)
Naman Dandia (Semi Finalist)
ORIGINAL ADVOCACY
**Heather Cherniss (1st)**
ORIGINAL PROSE & POETRY
**Max Slade (1st)**
Suroor Nakhoda (2nd)
THEMATIC INTERP
Aneri Bhatt (Semi Finalist)
As a team, we did amazing! Mitty placed 3rd in Debate as a school and 1st in Speech as a school. In overall sweepstakes, MSD placed FIRST out of more than 140 schools! Congratulations everyone! Special thanks to alumni Erica Johnson for coming to support the team!
After the tournament wrapped up, the entire group went to Glow Zone for some post-tournament fun. This included mini-golf, bowling, bumper cars, obstacle courses and TONS more!! Everyone had an amazing time and made memories with all their teammates.
The next morning everyone had breakfast together and we began our bus ride back to San Jose filled with excitement and memories to share with the rest of the team. We wanted to extend a HUGE thank you to parents, Mrs. Whalen, Mrs. Korb and Mrs. Whitney for chaperoning and judging over the weekend. Also a huge thank you to our coaches, Mr. Ko, Mr. Woodhead, Mr. Cruz and Mrs. Cruz! None of this would be possible without your constant support and guidance.
With the Long Beach Invitational behind us, it’s now time to switch gears and get ready for our upcoming league speech and debate competitions in October and November. We can’t wait for all that’s to come during the rest of the season!!