The Tech high school speech and debate team recently went on their annual trip to Boston, Massachusetts, where they competed at the Harvard Speech and Debate tournament, which features teams from all over the country.
The team left on Thursday, February 14th, and arrived back in Minnesota on the 19th. Although this may seem like a fun vacation, the competitors were hard at work the entire trip.
As soon as the team arrived in Boston, they got checked into the hotel and went right to work, performing their speeches for each other.
On Friday, they spent the entire day working with the coaches and chaperones who went on the trip. Saturday and Sunday were the days of competition, with events from 8 in the morning until 8:30 at night.
In each room, there are 7 competitors and each one will be ranked 1-7 by the judge, depending on how well they do. Those ranks are used to determine a composite score to determine who finals. Everyone has 4 rounds of prelims, and anyone who does extremely well in prelims “breaks” to finals.
There are 7 national categories, and at this meet, there were around 300 entries per category. To make it to any of the final rounds, you need to place in the top quarter. The speech team had a successful competition with 4 people making it to finals, which is both twice the amount they had final last year and the most they have ever had!
Lexi Handley made it to the top 256 entries in drama and duo. She also made it to the top 100 entries in POI (Program Oral Interpretation), making her the first person to break into finals in 3 separate categories at Harvard. Keep in mind, Harvard is a national tournament, so this is a huge deal! Will Anderson broke the top 256 as well in both drama and duo. Katie Poetz broke in original oratory. Victoria Anderson made it to quarterfinals (top 64) in info. On Monday, they watched the last round for each category and learned a lot.
Overall the speech team has been having a successful year, and the number of members has grown. If you would like to see the speech team in action, come to the home speech meet on March 23!
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