Feb. 11, 2023 — a day I had been waiting for since the beginning of the school year; a day that was one of the most important of the Speech and Debate season. It was NSDA (National Speech and Debate Association) Nationals Qualifiers, where the best competitors from schools in Tampa and Sarasota would come to debate and deliver speeches to win a qualification to the most prestigious competition in Speech and Debate — NSDA Nationals.
The Arrival
As any competition day, I was forced to wake up at 4:30 a.m. Half awake, I had to drag myself to the bathroom to get ready. Just two hours later, we were on our way to Tampa, specifically Wharton High School, the host of the tournament. The whole car ride was silent — all of us too busy preparing for the competition. In PVSD (Pine View Speech and Debate), it’s a tradition to prep at the last second.
Upon arriving at the school, I went into the cafeteria, where all the competitors were sitting and prepping, including the Pine View students. I saw sights you would only see at a Speech and Debate tournament: students talking to walls, frantically typing on their computers, and making as many TikToks as possible.
Of course, no matter how much I tried to reassure myself that I would do fine, I was still really nervous. In my section (United States Extemporaneous Speaking) there were five other competitors, all well experienced, with one of them being last year’s district champion. For those who aren’t familiar with Speech and Debate, US Extemp (as it’s called) you draft a speech in 30 minutes based on a topic related to a current event received during the round, then proceed to speak for seven minutes. You may be thinking, five competitors is a low number, but every competitor means more competition. Regardless, I had to drag my nervous self to the speech room.
The Speeches
Entering to the room, I knew it would be horrible from the start. The school had broken air conditioners blowing warm air and sitting in a suit in a 90-degree room was simply not comfortable. We tried to prop the door and windows open to allow for some wind to enter the room, but that only allowed for the outside temperature to heat up the room even more. We went through three rounds, and I felt fine about how they went, despite the fact that my judges rarely smiled during my speech, and that I thought I messed up my first round.
My rounds were over by around 2 p.m., yet the tournament would last another four hours. While competitions like these usually wrap up with an award ceremony by 4 p.m., a massive error had happened. In debate events where students argue for a either a pro or con side, the pairings online had messed up, meaning certain students who were supposed to argue pro ended up arguing con, or vice versa. This was an absolute disaster for judges, who had to submit who won based on pro or con, meaning a team that may have lost ended up receiving the win from the judge. This caused an immense amount of chaos, and it directly impacted us due to our four entries in Public Forum Debate having to look into the problem and work with the coordinators to fix it.
During that time, I managed to have a fun experience. Other events that had elimination rounds had finalists posted every once in a while, and seeing PVSD students celebrate was exciting. In almost all events we entered, someone ended up breaking to finals. Unfortunately, my event was too small to have a final round, so I had to wait out the entire time. I still got to have fun by playing games with friends, and anxiously hoping that we would take the wins. Some of those hours were easily the best of my Speech and Debate experience.
The Results
Finally, almost 11 hours after I arrived on campus, the results were going to be announced. Pine View ended up absolutely crushing the tournament, by taking the Overall Sweepstakes (most wins in all events), Speech Sweepstakes (most wins in Speech events), Coach of the Year for Mr. Froelich, seven alternates, and between four to six national qualifiers, which will be decided in the near future. I managed to win a bid to the National Speech and Debate Tournament, something that I’ll always be grateful for.
If there’s anything you can take away from here, it’s to join Speech and Debate. The memories I’ve made are like no other, and I’m beyond grateful and thankful to be here.
Stay tuned for the final part of my Speech and Debate series, debuting in May/June!