Lafayette Speech and Debate

The Lafayette Forensics Society has brushed off the dust (and sand) from the summer and returned for our 2025 2026 season of competition! After an extremely successful recruitment period, the team is excited to begin a new year of competition and have already attended two  tournaments since the beginning of the semester! For the first time, we competed in the synchronous Big Apple Debate tournament – a feat of sorts which took place entirely online and had 6 preliminary rounds of debate (yes, 6!). We also competed in our first in-person tournament of the season, the iconic Virginia is for Lovers tournament in Harrisonburg, Virginia. 

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Big Apple Debate Tournament

This debate-only tournament featured a stunning 6 preliminary rounds of debate and was held entirely online. We had 3 students compete in this tournament. Results are below:

Tyler, quarterfinalist! 4th place speaker

Bridget, 9th place speaker

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❤️ Virginia is for Lovers Tournament ❤️

Our first tournament in person was at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA! We had a great time making the drive to the great commonwealth of Virginia, ate some local ice cream and had a blast! Results are below:

ADS – Camsey, 3rd

Holly, 4th

Brynne, 6th

we had 3 competitors in the final round of ADS!

DI – Camsey, 2nd

our team award!

Duo – Brynne & Tyler, 3rd

Nat & Camsey, 2nd

Ext – Will, 4th

POI – Olivia, finalist

Max, 6th

Nat, 3rd

Camsey – 1st place Champion! 

Prose – Nat, 6th

Camsey, 1st place Champion! 

Imp – Will, 3rd

For individual sweepstakes awards, Camsey was 3rd place!

For team sweepstakes, Lafayette was 3rd place overall! Woohoo! 

What a great start to what is shaping up to be an incredible competitive season! Stay tuned and go pards! 

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NFA and IOA 2025

This year, the National Forensics Association Annual tournament was held in Detroit, Michigan at Wayne State University. This was our most successful NFA yet – the team placed 13th in the open division and 4th place in the Division 2 sweepstakes. We had a great time in Detroit (and had some Detroit style pizza of course). Results from NFA are below:

Octofinalists
Extemp, Ben, Tyler
ADS, Camsey
Impromptu, Will and Nat
Info, Ben
Poetry, Alex
Crit, Nat

Quarterfinalists (top 24 in the country)
DI, Nat
Pers, Ben
Info, Camsey

Semifinalists (top 12 in the country)
Ext, Will

Team Sweepstakes
4th in Presidents 2 Division!
13th in the Nation!! (open division)

The weekend after the team got back from NFA, Ben hopped on a plane to Nashville for the Interstate Oratory Contest. This special tournament is a persuasion-only tournament and awards the top 2 persuasive speakers in each state the opportunity to represent their state nationally. Since Ben was 2nd in Pennsylvania at the State tournament earlier this season, he qualified to represent the commonwealth. 

Ben was a national finalist at IOA and was 3rd in the nation! His speech, titled ‘Chasing Dollars, Not Justice: The Case Against Bounty Hunting‘ will also be published!

~Fun fact: IOA is the oldest forensics tournament in the country!~

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Semester Recap     

What a great end to a very successful semester and season of forensics! We started the season off at the Hell Froze Over Tournament, which despite being as crazy as it sounds, was successful, with the team having multiple semifinalists and finalists over the course of the weekend. The Ohio University Tournament saw the team take 4th place overall and win individual sweepstakes! The Virginia is for Lovers Tournament saw the team take 3rd in sweepstakes and 3rd in IE sweepstakes! The Pennsylvania state tournament was successful as usual; the team was 1st place for the 7th year in a row! We also won 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 6th place in Individual sweepstakes! The novice national tournament saw a number of our first year competitors become national semifinalists, finalists and champions! We had novice national champions in DI, Poetry and Prose! We had a national top IPDA speaker and a 4th place speaker, as well as an IPDA national runner up. Overall, the Novice team was 2nd in the country! Our returning competitors went to NSC, the National Speech Competition, another national tournament, and were wildly successful there as well! We had numerous national quarterfinalists and semifinalists, as well as a few finalists! Overall, the team won 6th place, higher than last year!

Stay tuned for next season! Go Pards!

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The last two weeks have been busy busy busy for the Lafayette squad! We split our squad up and the debate squad travelled to the Pi Kappa Delta national tournament at Ohio University. We were in Athens for almost a week and had 5 preliminary rounds of debate. The other half of the squad went to the National Speech Competition at Bradley University! NSC and PKD are two very special tournaments and our squads had a lot of fun at both of them. Results and photos from these two national tournaments are below!

Bridget and her flowpad at PKD!

NSC Results~

Ben, Impromptu Quarterfinalist

Nat, Persuasion Quarterfinalist

Camsey, POI and DI Quarterfinalist

Holly, ADS Quarterfinalist

Ben, Extemporaneous Semifinalist

Nat and Camsey, Duo Semifinalist

Nat, DI, Impromptu and Crit Semifinalist

Camsey, Info, ADS Semifinalist

The squad at NSC!

Overall, Ben was 4th in the country in info and in persuasion and the team was 6th in the country! Woohoo!

Ben holding our 6th place team award!

Last week, we drove 12 hours to  Georgia for the Annual Novice National Tournament! We had a blast in the South, enjoying the warm weather, eating southern BBQ and trying out fast food that we don’t have in the Northeast. Thank you to our wonderful hosts at the beautiful Berry College campus in Rome, GA! Results are below

Extemporaneous, Tyler, 5th place

Impromptu, Aleksandra, 4th place, Brynne, 2nd place

Info, Aleksandra, 3rd place

 DI, Amber, Novice National Champion!

Persuasion, Brynne, 5th place

Poetry, Alex, 6th place, Olivia, Novice National Champion!

POI, Alex, 3rd place

Prose, Alex, 5th place, Amber, 4th place, Olivia, Novice National Champion!

Crit, Tyler, 4th place

We debated on Friday as well. Results are below:

Tyler and Juan both advanced to the semi final round of IPDA. Juan was 4th place and Tyler advanced to the final round! He was 2nd place

Juan and Tyler both won speaker awards. Juan was 4th place speaker and Tyler was the Novice National champion 1st place speaker!

In addition to our regular season events, we competed in experimental events – Impromptu sales, public narrative and slam poetry. Results for the experimental events are below:

Imp Sales,  Brynne, 5th place

Public Narrative, Tyler, 5th place

Slam Poetry, Olivia, 5th place, Alex, 3rd

Tyler was also 4th place in Individual Events sweepstakes!

Overall, the team took 2nd place in team sweepstakes! What an awesome weekend!

This weekend, we attended the annual Pennsylvania Forensics Association state tournament in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. The tournament this year was hosted at Bloomsburg University. The Pennsylvania Forensics Association State tournament (also known as PFA) is the most important tournament in the state of PA at the collegiate level.  Not only is it a time for all the Pennsylvania college teams to converge and compete, but it determines who will represent the state of PA at the annual IOA tournament (Interstate Oratorical Association)! It’s always a great tournament and a fun time. Results for the tournament this weekend are below:

ADS, Michelle, 4th, Camsey, 2nd & Holly ADS state champion!

DI, Amber, 5th, Camsey, 2nd, Nat, DI state champion!

Duo, Camsey + Nat, state champions!

Ext, Brynne, 6th, Will, 5th, Ben, 4th, Tyler, 3rd

Info, Aleksandra, 4th, Holly, 3rd, Ben, 2nd, Camsey, Info state champion!

Impromptu, Brynne, 4th, Nat, 2nd

IPDA, Tyler, state champion!

Impromptu, Brynne, 4th Nat, 2nd

Persuasion, Will, 5th

Brynne, 4th, Nat, 3rd

Persuasion, Ben 2nd (PA state IOA qualifier!)

Poetry, Olivia, 5th, Will, 4th, Alex, 2nd

POI, Alex, 5th, Camsey, 2nd, Holly, POI state champion!

Prose, Holly 3rd, Alex, 2nd, Camsey, prose state champion!

Rhetorical Criticism, 2nd Nat, Tyler, crit state champion!

For IE sweepstakes, we had Ben in 6th place, Holly in 3rd place, Nat in 2nd place and Camsey was the individual sweepstakes champion and was 1st place in the state!

Finally, the 2025 Pennsylvania state champions were Lafayette College! What an amazing state tournament! Fun fact – Lafayette has won the state tournament every year since 2019!

This weekend, we travelled down south to the commonwealth of Virginia to attend the aptly named Virginia is for Lovers Tournament at George Mason University! We had a great time, from seeing our speech friends from near and far, to participating in the annual scavenger hunt (Ben found 1 ring!) to singing along to the Wicked musical soundtrack (both in the car and at the awards ceremony).

(pictures from this weekend; can you tell the tournament was Wicked themed?)

The students had an amazing weekend – results are below:

ADS Penelope, 5th
Camsey, 6th

Rhetorical Criticism Nat, 4th
Tyler, 2nd

DI Camsey 2nd

Duo Alex + Penelope, 6th

Extemporaneous Ben, 2nd

Info Ben, 3rd
Camsey, 4th

Poetry Alex, 5th

POI Camsey, 5th

Prose Alex, 4th
Camsey, 2nd

Camsey won an individual sweepstakes awards and was 3rd place! 

 Overall, the team was 3rd place! What a great weekend and the perfect warmup for our Pennsylvania State Tournament next weekend!

The semester is up and running! Lafayette College started classes on Monday but the speech team has already been to 2 tournaments this month! 

HFO~~

Two weeks ago, we took a few students to Austin, Texas for the Hell Froze Over tournament at the University of Texas at Austin, aptly named for it’s aggressive and intense back to back rounds. The students were troopers and performed phenomenally. HFO results are below:

In the Saturday portion of the tournament we had multiple semifinals breaks. Camsey broke to semifinals in ADS, Ben broke to semis in info, and Natalia broke to semis in impromptu!

Camsey was 5th in info and Natalia was 6th in impromptu!

In the Sunday portion of the tournament, there were multiple breaks as well! Natalia broke to semis in DI while Camsey broke to semis in info. Camsey was also 6th in prose!

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1804 ~~

This past weekend, we went to the Ohio University 1804 tournament in Athens, Ohio! It was a great tournament and a looong drive. We headed down to Athens on Thursday for the debate portion of the tournament on Friday! We also had a special guest, Jordan, one of our team alums, join us on Saturday for the speech portion of the tournament. The results are below:

After Dinner Speaking – Camsey was 4th, Levi was 5th, and Michelle was 6th

DI – Camsey was 1st place!

Extemp –  Ben was 2nd place

Impromptu – Ben was 5th place

Info – Ben was 3rd place and Camsey was 1st place!

Persuasion – Ben was 3rd place

Poetry – Alex was 3rd place

POI – Camsey was 3rd place

Prose – Camsey was 3rd place and Alex was 6th place

For individual event sweepstakes, Ben was 4th place and Camsey was 1st place champion!

The team also won 4th place in team sweeps!

(pictured below)

That’s a wrap for the first semester of the 2024-2025 forensics season! 

This past weekend we went to the gorgeous Hofstra University to compete in the annual Off Broadway tournament! This was a swing so we competed in both the Saturday and Sunday portions of the tournament. Pictures and results are below!

For the Saturday portion of the Off Broadway Swing, we had students compete in both the speech and debate parts of the tournament. 

For the speech half,
ADS, Camsey, 2nd
Extemp, Will 4th
Poetry, Alex, 5th

For IPDA debate, we had 2 bronze medalists/semifinalists!
Juan & Matt!
& Bridget was 3rd place IPDA speaker!

For team awards, we won 3rd place for IPDA sweeps

The Sunday portion of the Off Broadway Swing results are below!
ADS, Camsey, 1st place champion! 
Extemp, Will, 4th
Info, Camsey, 4th
Prose, Camsey, 4th, Holly, 5th
Poetry, Alex, 5th

For Sunday, the team competed in Parliamentary debate and we had 2 teams – Bridget and Juan & Matt and Matt (who debated solo)
For parliamentary, Bridget and Juan won 2nd place overall!
For speaker points,
Juan was 3rd place speaker
Bridget was 1st place champion! 

For team awards, they were 2nd place for debate and 4th place for combined sweepstakes!

                                                                  🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆🐆

The team had an amazing first semester of competition. We had an insanely successful recruiting season and have welcomed 20 novices onto the squad! We went to numerous tournaments over the course of the semester including the Virginia is for Lovers tournament at James Madison University, the Dutchess Community College and Seton Hall SNAFU tournaments, and the Off Broadway swing. We also had Camsey compete in an asynchronous tournament where they won 6th place in ADS! We also hosted our annual OchoIE tournament which was a huge success! A few of the returners participated in various community service events at Phillipsburg High School over the course of the semester as well. We caught up with a our very special alumni at different tournaments like Yazdan, Jordan, Saeed, Ben and Danny! Busy busy busy, but what a great end to a great semester!

Happy holidays and we will see you all next year when the semester & season starts up again! 🙂

Holly and Camsey for Prose!

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Bridget and Juan (on the right side) for Parli debate!

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Will for Extemp!

(on the left hand side)   

team warmups on Sunday morning!

This past weekend, we went to Seton Hall University for our first swing tournament of the semester! Since it was a swing, it was a long weekend with the students competing in two different tournaments over the course of the weekend! Both tournaments were held at Seton Hall in Newark, not too far from Lafayette’s campus. We also had 2 alumni join us and judge! Jordan & Yazdan were with us this weekend.

The Saturday tournament was called the Ed Leonard, named after a Seton Hall competitor. Results for the Ed Leonard portion are below:

ADS – Penelope, 1st place champion!
ADS- Holly, 3rd
Rhetorical Criticism – Natalia, 2nd
Impromptu Sales – Brynne, 6th
Impromptu – Will, 1st place champion!
Persuasion- Nat, 2nd
Poetry – Alex, 1st place champion!
Prose – Alex, 1st place champion!
Prose – Holly, 3rd

For debate, Bridget was a semifinalist and won 4th place overall!

For debate speaker awards, Bridget was 2nd & Bay was 4th!

The team also won 2 team awards!

For team sweepstakes, we were 2nd place overall. The team also walked away with the Ed Leonard award which is given annually to a competitor and a team who best emulate the characteristics of Ed Leonard, the competitor that the tournament is named after. This award means a lot to us as a team as it is not based on competitiveness but on team personality! (pictures of the award below!)

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The Sunday tournament was called the SNAFU Charity Ball! Each team was tasked with providing a charity and the SNAFU organization donated to the top 3 teams’ charities of choice! We were 5th place overall so we did not win a donation to our charity, but this is a great incentive for teams to perform. The charity we chose was Third Street Alliance, a women’s shelter in downtown Easton, where Lafayette is located. The results (and pictures!) from the Charity Ball tournament are below:

ADS – Penelope, 2nd, Holly 4th

Rhetorical Criticism – Natalia, 2nd
Persuasion – Natalia, 5th
Poetry – Alex, 1st place champion!
POI – Natalia, 6th

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The Lafayette Forensics Society had an amazing weekend this past week! We had half the team travel to Poughkeepsie, New York, for the Dutchess Community College Invitational Tournament while the other half volunteered to judge at the Phillipsburg Spooktacular High School Tournament. Both events went swimmingly.

The Dutchess tournament is the 3rd tournament that we have gone to this semester. We took almost entirely novices (plus Natalia) and had a great time in Poughkeepsie. The students did amazing and performed well, evident by the ranks the team had at the end of the weekend. Results (and pictures) are below!

ADS, Penelope, 3rd 
Rhetorical Criticism, Natalia, 3rd place
Persuasion, Natalia, 5th place
Poetry, 5th, Alex place
Prose, 2nd, Alex place
Impromptu, Natalia, 1st place Champion 

For IPDA debate, Juan and Matt both made it to semi finals! This means that out of the 14 debaters who competed, the two of them were the 2nd and 3rd top competitors. (They both also went 4-0 in preliminary rounds – impressive!) There were two outrounds, a semifinal round and a final round. Because Matt and Juan were slated to hit each other in semi finals, Juan automatically advanced being that he was 2nd seed. Ultimately, Matt was 3rd in IPDA and 3rd for IPDA speaker, while Juan was 2nd in IPDA and top IPDA speaker!

This fantastic team also won a few team sweepstakes awards! For the speech portion of the tournament, they were 3rd place overall

For the debate portion, the team was 1st place and won the tournament!

For the combined sweepstakes (speech + debate portion) the team was 3rd place overall!

As a team, we attempt to have at least 2 community service events a year as a means of giving back to the forensics community. This semester we had 3 of our returners go to a local high school tournament to help volunteer to judge.  They judged every round of parliamentary debate and congress, including finals! Of the experience, co-president Will says,

“Forensics is such a big part of my life and it’s brought me so much joy and purpose — there’s no greater feeling for me than to be able to give back to this community I love so much and help make it possible for the next generation of competitors to compete. They have incredible potential and I feel more confident about our future knowing it is in their hands.”

(pictures of the 3 of them are below!)