On March 3, students from the FUHS speech and debate team qualified to go to State Championships. A great opportunity for the 26 qualified students, the tournament promises big rewards.

Junior Thomas Kim emphasized that the qualifiers are not much different from typical tournaments except for the fact that everyone is competing for a spot in the State Championships.

“It was pretty much the same as in the structure,” said Kim. “[It] was the same, but everyone was more tense because there was a lot more on the line.”

Kim also shares his experience at the tournament.

“I did limited prep events, so basically I get a topic at the tournament and then various amounts of time to prep and then give a speech,” said Kim. “Each round is a different topic, so I think first round they did quotes about rainbows or something [like that]. Then, the second round was movies.”

Freshman Amelia Jones describes the individuality of speech and debate as a whole and how the team comes together at the end of the tournament.

“They’re all really individual events until you get to debate where you have partners. So it’s always individually oriented until they add up the cumulative scores of everyone on the team and that’s where it plays into which high school did best overall – when you add up all the individual scores,” said Jones.

Jones also includes how she was picked to participate in the qualifiers and how she excelled to finals.

“To qualify, Ms. Merritt created a list of who she thought had the possibility of qualifying and then the judges made the final outcome,” said Jones. “There are typically three rounds and from there you qualify to semi-finals, then finals, and so the first three rounds were on March 2 and if you got a high enough score, then you went to semi-finals or finals – mine went straight to finals because we didn’t have enough in the event to have semi-finals.”

Senior Rebecca Jones expressed her excitement having placed as one of the top three in her two events in the finals.

“I was really excited because I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it at first because there were a lot of really good competitors and I was just kind of surprised. Especially when I found out I qualified in two events,” said Jones.

Jones participated in two events, expository and duo interpretation.

“One of them was an informative speech about transplants and the other one was like a dramatic duo with me and another guy,” says Jones. “In July, we actually got the script, so we didn’t write it ourselves or anything and we just had to memorize it and develop characters.”

Overall, this huge opportunity is a big deal for all the students who qualified. They showcased their talents in the qualifiers and came out of it with a huge success. State Championships is ahead of these students and FUHS wishes them good luck!