Congratulations to Yorba Linda High School’s Speech and Debate team for competing at the 2019 Orange County Speech League Fall Tournament! On November 9, members of YLHS’s Speech and Debate team performed speeches and debated at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, 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, Parliament, Public Forum, and Extemp. 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.

In this particular tournament, Student Congress debated a total of six pieces of legislation, including: the College For All Act, A Bill To Ban the Usage Of Private Military Contractors, A Bill To Sanction Saudi Arabia, A Resolution To Expand Nuclear Power, A Resolution to Amend the Constitution to Establish Rights of Nature, and the No Federal Funding for Confederate Symbols Act.

Each event competed in three prelim rounds with students from all over the country before qualifying for a finals round.

Congratulations to Raymond Nguyen (12) for placing fourth in Original Oratory. Congratulations to Andrew Krohn (12) and Anna Bulis (12) for placing third and fourth, respectively, in Impromptu. Congratulations to Chris Mancini (10), Raiyan Kalam (11), Caitlyn Truong (12), and Tim Lee (10) for placing first, second, third, and fifth, respectively, in Student Congress. Congratulations to Yorba Linda High School for placing fourth in overall sweepstakes.

Sierra Lane (12), who competed in Parliamentary debate, reflects, “I had a great time at our first tournament of the year at Saddleback High School. The topics for this tournament were interesting and made for good debate. I’m excited for the rest of the tournament season.”

Congratulations to YLHS’s Speech and Debate team for their hard work at their first tournament!