Congratulations to Yorba Linda High School’s Speech and Debate team for ending their amazing season by competing at the state tournament! On the weekend of April 20-22, members of YLHS’s Speech and Debate team who qualified at previous tournaments competed at California High School Speech Association’s 61st annual state championship tournament at Mountain House High School near Tracy, California.

Speech and Debate is a seventh period class taught by Ms. Dagampat (Staff) alongside coach Tristan Parker, alumni of Esperanza High School where he competed as well. Students may choose from a wide variety of events with different standards and expectations according to the student’s preference. Speech events include dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation, prose-poetry reading, duo interpretation, original oratory, oratorical interpretation, or impromptu speaking. Students competing in speech events spend weeks preparing an eight to ten minute long speech which they then practice and tune to perfection. Evaluations are based on content, performance, and memorization.

Students interested in current news and delivering persuasive, unscripted arguments will look to the debate side of the class. Debate events include Lincoln-Douglas debate, Student Congress, and Parliament. Lincoln-Douglas debate involves one student debating with another about a current topic; in Student Congress, students imitate a legislative debate regarding bills and resolutions affecting the country and the world.

Speech and Debate has had a wonderful, successful year competing at invitationals at CSUF and Cypress College as well as league tournaments at Northwood High School. The Orange County Speech League State Qualifiers in March determined the students who qualified to compete at state. Rohita Thammineni (9), Wayne Chan (11), and Caitlyn Truong (10) competed in Student Congress. Anna Zhang (9) was a Presiding Officer competitor, Andrew Krohn (10) represented the Impromptu event, and Julia Massey (10) delivered her speech for the Original Advocacy event. Blake Han (11) and Ryan Lowery (11) were a duo competing in Parliamentary debate.

Wayne Chan (11), who competed in Student Congress and advanced to the semi-finals round, reflects, “I had a great time at the state tournament. Spending time in northern California and competing against Speech and Debate students from all over the state has definitely been a very fun learning experience. While being up against the best of the best was a little intimidating, I’m proud of all the Yorba Linda High School kids for representing our school and making it here. We’ve had a great season overall.”

Congratulations on a spectacular 2017-2018 Speech and Debate season, YLHS!