On May 3rd and May 4th, Keppel’s Speech & Debate team competed in the Novice Championships and won first place sweepstakes in the Southern California Debate League second division, moving up from being in third division previously. Over the past year, the hard work of Speech & Debate members has culminated in increases in National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA) memberships and overall increased performance and participation throughout this school year as opposed to prior years.
“The competition was a wonderful experience,” Keppel Speech & Debate sophomore, Elijah Webster, said on his experience at Novice Championships “We all had a lot of fun doing what we do best and we learned a lot in the process. It is a huge improvement from last year.”
As most of Mark Keppel students are usually barely arriving to school, or even still in the process of getting ready for school in the morning, there are some students who have a zero period, also known as Speech & Debate. This course indulges students in the arts of public speaking, performing, debating, and memorization. Advised and coached by Rebecca Smith, these students are practicing and preparing themselves for competitions in the mornings in the auditorium starting as early as 7:30AM.
There are many students who partake in Speech & Debate, in fact, so many that the class is separated into different categories and forms of speech and debate: Congress, Interpretive, Public Forum, and Extemporaneous. Students get to choose which category they would prefer to specialize in and focus on. Keppel’s team is a part of the Southern California Debate League, which is responsible for operating the competitions that the teams in the Alhambra Unified School District compete under.
In debate categories, Keppel’s team managed to place in Congress, Public Forum, and Lincoln Douglas. Junior student, Jessica Xue placed in 7th place for Congress, freshmen students, Sean Jiang and Thomas Zhao placed in 6th place for Public Forum, and in Lincoln Douglas, freshman, Jayson Kuang placed in 2nd, freshman Minnie Tsui placed in 4th, and freshman Faith Tan placed in 7th.
As for the speech categories, they placed in U.S. Extemporaneous, International Extemporaneous, Impromptu, SPAR, and Declamation. In United States Extemporaneous, sophomores Whitney Hoang and Raymond Wong placed respectively. Kuang placed in 3rd place for International Extemporaneous and Tan placed in 2nd place for Impromptu. In SPAR, sophomore Elijah Webster placed in 2nd place and Tan placed in 4th place. Hoang placed in 5th place for Declamation, and for placing in both of her speech categories, she was awarded the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award. Tan,who placed in both her speech categories as well as in her debate category, was also awarded with MVP for her sweep in multiple categories.
The students who competed in these championships have displayed astonishing effort and superior achievement. Keppel has rarely seen such high ranks since pandemic started, but with these scores and new achievements, their Speech & Debate team appears to be on track for a successful comeback, conducting them to aggrandize their results in next year’s competitions, and all future competitions in their league. Congratulations to these winners!
