Stuy S&D Weekly Update #6: December 15, 2023

Dear Speech and Debate families,

Welcome back to the Stuy Speech and Debate update! Over the last few weeks, our teams competed at invitational tournaments at Princeton and Ridge. Congratulations to everyone who attended!

Speech & Extemp team at Princeton!

As a reminder, you can find all the team pictures, updates, tournament schedule, permission slips/forms, and donation page on our website. Thank you for being a part of the Stuyvesant Speech & Debate family!

---

Team Updates

Extemp:

Extemp + Princeton = HUGE SUCCESS! 

Extemp had an amazing performance last week at Princeton– not only did Eshaal Ubaid CHAMPION the tournament, but four extempers broke to eliminations: Kai Li (5th Place, Finalist), Aleksey Olkhovenko (Quarterfinalist), and Justin Ha (Quarterfinalist)! We also saw AMAZING results from the other extempers: Ashley Lo, Unique Zhang, Iverli Garcia Perez, and Myles Vuong! Back in New York, we had a huge showing at Chapin from our novices. Congrats to Nuoyan Chen for getting 12th! GO STUY!

Congress:

Congress had an incredibly successful time at the Princeton Classic last week!! A whopping EIGHT competitors advanced to semi-finals: Ellis Thompson (novice!), Sebastian Tecza, Louis Oh-Aronson, Sarah Diaz, and Olivia Woo. Three competitors advanced all the way to finals: Raymond Chen (JV!), Jiawen Lin, and William Tang, who placed 10th! We are so proud of all of our competitors and are looking forward to watching our novices continue to blossom in upcoming tournaments!

Speech:

Speech did amazing at Chapin and Princeton last week! At Chapin, Ariana Lin tied for first and Amanda Greenberg placed third in JV Oral Interpretation (OI), while Prajusha Azeem both oversaw the tournament and placed fourth in Varsity OI. At Princeton, Renae Leung made it to quarter-finals and Erica Liu advanced to semi-finals in OI, earning a bid to the Tournament of Champions. In Humorous Interpretation, Ethan Khosh and Audrey Hilger both made it to semi-finals. The team did wonderfully and we have so much room to grow — look forward to more amazing results!

Lincoln Douglas:

Lincoln Douglas had an amazing time at Princeton and Ridge! At Princeton, three of our novices finished the tournament with an even record: Evelyn Lifton, Archie Ovitigala, and Emma Lin. Two of our novices broke to the elimination rounds: Mufei Yu made it to double octo-finals and Alexis Qian made it to semi-finals, placing 4TH overall! 

At Ridge, in novice LD, Mufei Yu, Alexis Qian, Kiren Sitwala, and Evelyn Lifton achieved a 3-2 record in prelims, with both Evelyn and Kiren breaking to octo-finals! Additional congratulations to Evelyn for placing 10th speaker and Lisa Burdi for placing 3rd speaker, as well as Archie, Hayley, and William for competing through a tough tournament! In varsity LD, Henry Ji went 3-2 in prelims and broke to octo-finals. We're excited for our novices to compete at the Christmas Chlassich this weekend, where they will no doubt blow us away again!

Public Forum:

Public Forum crushed it at Princeton and Ridge last week! A HUGE congrats to Helen Mancini (19th Speaker!) & Astrid Harrington (16th Speaker!) and Solomon Binyaminov & Jasmine Liang for earning gold bids to the TOC, and Brandon Tung & Annie Li for their silver bids. Congrats to Eric Liu & Benjamin Yarden for advancing to elimination rounds in varsity PF and Anika Chandran and Amani Kaushal in novice PF. 

At Ridge, Astrid Harrington and Helen Mancini were CHAMPIONS in varsity PF and placed 1st and 2nd speakers respectively! Congrats to Kikyo Makino-Siller and Amrisha Roy for reaching semi-finals in varsity PF, and Adrien Devrey-Michaelson and Ethan Zheng for advancing in novice PF. Looking ahead, novice PF is gearing up for Christmas Classich on Saturday.

Policy:

Policy had a fantastic time at the Ridge tournament! We are extremely proud of novice team Valerie Pook and Ken Wakida who made it to quarter-finals and placed 12th and 15th speaker respectively! In the varsity division, Kassandra Sinchi and Rahul Kissoon made it to semi-finals and placed 4TH and 2ND speaker respectively. A huge shoutout as well to Ziying Zhang and Luca Nedelkovic who competed at their first varsity tournament! Our novices will be competing again in the Online Policy League this weekend, and we look forward to their success!

Parliamentary:

Parli had a great tournament online and at Ridge last week! At the online tournament, Frieda Kuehlmann placed 7th and Ella Dugdale placed 8th in the Novice division. At Ridge, Parli had a blast debating topics ranging from AI tech to International Relations, and left the tournament as more knowledgeable and engaged people. We bonded over meals and enjoyed spending time together on the bus and between rounds. We are so proud of everyone who attended, and we look forward to our tournament this weekend at Dalton!

---

Thank you for taking the time to read this update! We hope you found it informative and enjoyable. If you liked this update, please consider sharing it with your friends and family who may also be interested.

If you have any questions or would like to provide feedback, don't hesitate to reach out to us by responding to this email or contacting stuy4n6@gmail.com. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

For those who were forwarded this email and are interested in receiving future updates, please type in your email at the bottom of this page to subscribe to our mailing list. We look forward to keeping you in the loop about all things Stuyvesant Speech & Debate!