For the first time in three years, Speech and Debate attended the State Championships, hosted in Union City, California at James Logan High School, April 6-7. Five students competed in states: Speech co-captain Serena Lee (12) placed 27th in Original Advocacy and Speech co-captain Sunny Park (12) placed 27th in Declamation. Lee and Park had a cold coming up to the event, but still managed to place well in States.
Sriya Indlamuri (9) and Evan Liu (11) placed 40th in Public Forum, and Vamshi Krishna Ramasamy (10) placed 36th in National Extemporaneous.
Park said she focused on her body language in preparation for her speech. Her event, Declamation, is an interpretive event in which the speaker doesn’t write their own speech; instead, they memorize a speech written by someone else. Park found her speech from a TED talk: ‘How art helps me grapple with grief.’
“My body language, my motions, and the pacing of my speech were extremely important,” Park said. “Specifically for declamation, that is the main focus. So, I practiced in front of the mirror and made sure that I had all of my steps and my movements down.”
In Original Advocacy, an event where the speaker aims to persuade the audience that a legislation change should be enacted, Lee asserted that hostile architecture is wrong. Hostile architecture is design elements in public spaces that are intended to prevent people, like the homeless, from sleeping or loitering.
“My legislation was about reducing it and then fixing the actual homeless issue,” Lee said. “I got sick the entire week leading up to the competition. That made it kind of difficult for me because I decided to rewrite my speech the week before, and then every single day after that, I rewrote it again and again. When I went up to speak, I was so scared, because I didn’t have it fully memorized. But thankfully, after one round, it locked in.”
Indlamuri was the only freshman from her district to advance to states in Public Forum, a paired event where she and her partner, Liu, debated whether the United States should eliminate the president’s authority to deploy military forces abroad without congressional approval.
“For debate, the best way to get better is practice,” Indlamuri said. “We practiced so much to the point we got comfortable making the same argument over and over again. I also read a lot about my topic. I’ve gone to fifteen tournaments this year. I’ve been able to meet a lot of people and learn from each person to improve my debate skills.”
She said the State Championships offered a place where she learned a lot from people with more experience in debate.
“At States, I got to meet a lot of people who are extremely talented in the event, and it helped me learn a lot,” Indlamuri said. “We were in a lot of high-pressure rounds with people who had really good winning records from previous tournaments, so winning against them was really thrilling. It was scary encountering people like that, but all in all it was a really nice experience. ”
Lee said she was happy that the speech team won so many awards this year.
“We went through a lot last year, and it was pretty difficult because of the lack of funding and lack of good advisors,” Lee said. “This year, I feel like we really were able to make a comeback. We have a coach now. We have results. Our Speech team won 27 awards this year. Last year, Speech only won one award. Coming to States is a symbol of [success], because we haven’t come to States in three years.”
Although the season for the speech team has come to a close, in debate, Indlamuri and Liu have one last chance to qualify for Nationals in Public Forum.
“We’re gonna try our best to make nationals,” Indlamuri said. “It is obviously extremely hard and only the top one to three percent of all debaters ever go to nationals. So we’re going to try our best. As for the future, I really love to make nationals one day, and I really hope to go to the state tournament throughout the rest of high school.”
Park said she was proud of the whole Speech and Debate team.
“As a captain, I’m so proud of seeing students qualify for States,” Park said. “Compared to other schools, we’re really small as a team. We only have 30 people, while other teams have over 200 people. We also don’t have as much funding or professional coaches, so it’s really on us to improve ourselves and learn our events. I’m so proud that we were able to make it to States and get this far.”
Lee said the experience was filled with nostalgia for her, as she isn’t doing speech and debate in college.
“States were just so nostalgic,” Lee said. “During the tournament, there are small things that I really enjoy. Even though it seems kind of basic, everyone in that room is all kind of in the same position, so it’s really fun. You get to talk to people afterwards, and everyone was nervous, everyone had fun, and you make those friends and connections, and I’m [going to] miss that a lot. And then when I realized that I just finished my last round in my life, I was pretty sad knowing that I would never get to experience something like that again.”
