The Arcadia Speech and Debate team has been hard at work, with five students getting up to semifinals and three students reaching the final round at the annual State Championship Tournament. Arcadia placed 9th overall, which is the best the team has ever performed.

Senior Becky Chen participated in the semifinal round of Congress, an event where competitors simulate the United States Congress and attempt to pass legislation. Participants debate the bills to reach a compromise, with judges evaluating competitors on their ability to answer questions, research and formulate arguments, and use parliamentary procedure.

Freshman Zachary Sakti placed 17th in the semifinal round of Oratorical Interpretation, which encompasses the speech part of the competition. Within this category, an individual must find and give a speech that has been published and given to a public forum sometime in the past. From there, participants have to show their knowledge in analyzing the original speaker’s intent, and reinterpret what the original speaker meant in a new way to a vastly different audience. This category can seem challenging, though each participant really just needs to familiarize themself with the information to succeed.

Senior Oishika Chattopadhyay landed a strong 14th place in the Impromptu Speaking semifinals. As the name suggests, students have a short seven-minute period of time to select a topic, conceptualize ideas, create a few drafts, and eventually deliver the speech on the chosen topic. Competitors have to be ready at any moment to perform well in this, as the range of chosen topics is enormous.

Freshman Michelle Fan and junior Anvitha Marlapati placed 10th and 18th in Informative Speeches, respectively, pushing Arcadia up to the top teams in the state. For this category, competitors must write and deliver a speech informing audiences about a specific subject. The speaker must get the audience to fully understand the topic, and must demonstrate how well they know the material. While many speeches are meant to keep an audience engaged and entertained, these sorts of speeches should be chiefly focused on teaching listeners.

While these students were quite successful in their endeavors, a select few were able to rise above it all and secure strong finishes in the final round of the tournament.

Senior Harit Talwar placed 5th in the final round in Oratorical Interpretation, where the competition gets quite fierce. Senior Andy Li similarly placed 5th in the final round of Humorous Interpretation, where competitors must choose a short story, portion of a play, or other humorous published work and so display their comedic skill. This can be in script analysis, timing, delivery, and character development. The speaker should also be focused on emphasizing the comedic effect of their chosen work, making their performance as humorous as possible. Since the performer only gets ten minutes total and cannot use costumes and/or props, their aim is to captivate the audience and be as vibrant as possible.

Most successfully, senior Rachel Wang placed 1st in the state in Original Advocacy. Here, she exemplified a student’s role of creating a persuasive speech on a topic and trying to win over the audience.

After reflecting on the tournament, freshman Zachary Sakti mentioned that he “felt a sense of relief” that he “made it through,” but was “a little let down.” Despite this, Sakti achieved a lot, and he “looks forward to next year’s tournaments using” all of what he learned in his introductory year.

The collective success of students such as senior Rachel Wang, as well as the rest of these semi-finalists and finalists, highlights the strength of this program. Arcadia Speech and Debate continues to uphold a strong legacy, and will surely do so continuing on in the future.

Photo courtesy of Becky Chen