A slow comeback
Over Hays High School’s 4 day weekend, the Hays Speech and Debate team traveled to San Antonio and competed at Ronald Reagan High School. This comes following initial success over the 8th and 9th of September when the team brought home 6 finalists across various events in La Vernia, Texas. However, this time around, the team came home with 12 finalists across even more events. This all follows a rocky couple of years for the team attributed to the COVID-19 outbreak.
With having to do virtual tournaments and overall low motivation and participation on the team, the team has had a rough couple of years. Consider the fact that there were only two seniors who attended the annual team banquet last year; a group of seniors whose freshmen year was the Covid year. Moreover, the team went from bringing two vans of people to State to only bringing 4 people last year. While the previous years have had small successes for some individuals, this year promises to be a success for the entire team with more people competing and more people having success.
High hopes for State
To put a stamp on the team’s success, Jackson Juel, a second-year student of Debate, gets the team’s first State qualification by placing 1st in Student Congress. Jackson Juel also placed first in Domestic Extemp, only needing one more state point to earn his qualification in the event. Because of the nature of Student Congress, he competed alongside our three other finalists in the event. In unprecedented fashion once again, Wyatt Carter, a freshman, advanced to the final round of Student Congress alongside Dorothy Adams and myself, in which we placed 3rd and 4th respectively.
In Foreign Extemp, we took three out of the six spots in finals. Miguel Gonzalez and Logan Beyer advanced to finals for the first time placing 5th and 6th whilst second-year student Alex Gilbert placed 4th in a competitive round. In the novice division of extemp, first-year students Barron Liu and Wilhelmina Dehart placed 2nd or 4th in their first time competing in the event.
In Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Rachel Wood made it to the quarter-final round ending with a record of 4-2. Kaitlyn Wilson placed 3rd place in Program Oral Interp in her 2nd time competing in the event while Lynford Noriega placed 7th in his first time competing in Humorous Interp. With all of these successes, it bodes well for the future of Hays Speech and Debate at the regional, state, and national level.
