Lafayette Speech and Debate

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 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!)

It’s that time of the year again! We hosted our annual tournament, the OchoIE over the weekend of the 12th and 13th. As always, it was a great experience hosting on our beautiful campus. We had a total of 8 schools visit us from as far as Ohio (hello Ohio University!) and as close as Bloomsberg, PA. 

The great thing about hosting is that we get to do whatever we want for our tournament, and as always, we pulled out all the works. We provide a unique 2 day 3 round schedule for the weekend which allows students to be more relaxed during the tournament, gets them additional practice and feedback from judges, and allows for a later start time and earlier end time. In addition to that, we provided coffee and donuts for competitors and judges over the weekend, as well as lunch on both days for everybody. On Sunday morning, we had our traditional omelette bar breakfast for coaches and judges. And most notably, we gave away the largest trophies in the entire region (pictured below) and a super cool wrestling belt for the winner of the quality award, which was West Chester University!

Since we hosted this tournament, we only had our new recruits compete. We had numerous IPDA entries and 1 speech entry and our novices were amazing! Results are below:

Olivia, 4th – prose

Juan, 6th – IPDA speaker

Bridget, 2nd – IPDA speaker & IPDA quarterfinalist (pictured below)

The team also won 4th place in debate sweepstakes! What a great 2nd tournament of the season! Stay tuned for more!

We kicked off the forensics season with the annual Virginia is for Lovers tournament in Harrisonburg, Virginia at James Madison University. We travelled with a large group this weekend (17 students!) including multiple first year competitors. 

We also had two of our wonderful forensics team alums, Kelly and Yazdan, judging for us!

Tournament results are as follows:

ADS, Holly 5th
Extemp, Ben 2nd, Will 3rd
Impromptu, Nat 6th
Info, Ben 3rd
POI, Holly 4th
Prose, Holly 5th

The team also placed 4th in team sweepstakes!

+ next weekend, we are hosting our annual OchoIE tournament! Stay tuned!

This weekend, we took our wonderful novice Holly to the 150th Interstate Oratory National Championship. This tournament is super important as it is the oldest tournament in our community! Holly was 1 of two representatives from the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Competitors for this tournament qualify by being the top winners of persuasive speaking in the state. In Holly’s case, she was number 1 in PA! (pictures below)

aaaand that’s a wrap on the 2023/2024 forensics season! what a blast! This season has been insanely eventful, from running our own tournament in October, to making our way to Peoria, Illinois TWICE! to winning the Pennsylvania Forensics Association States Championship and the Novice National Championship! We took the students to NFA, the biggest and most important national tournament of the year and the culmination of the seasons’ work, and had multiple octofinalists, quarterfinalists and novice national finalists and champions! stay tuned for next season, and as always, rollll pards!

Holly wearing her custom made IOA shirt (with her last name on the back) with Lexi, a fellow competitor from OU

dim sum we got while we were in Chicago for IOA!

Holly practicing her speech before competition!

Last week, we took the entire squad to Mount Pleasant, Michigan for the National Forensics Association Tournament, the most important national tournament of the season (as well as the last) and the culmination of a years’ worth of hard work. Full squad in tow, we spent a week in Central Michigan with our friends @ CMU. In the forensics world, we say ‘NFA is a marathon, not a sprint,’ and was it a marathon indeed. An entire week of competition, living together and eating together, but a great week it was, and the team was very successful

There were 61 schools at this years Nationals, with a total of 399 students and 10,594 ballots (yes, 10,594 ballots). A true marathon indeed. Nevertheless, the students persisted and did phenomenal. With such a young squad full of novices and second year competitors, the results of NFA 2024 are only indicative of what is to come in the next years with this awesome group. Results are as follows…

NFA is unique in that it has octofinal rounds, in addition to quarters, semis, and finals. We had several national octofinalists:

Camsey octo’d persuasion and POI, while both Jordan and Camsey octo’d their duo!

Natalia octo’d her DI

and Ben octo’d in impromptu and extemp!

In addition to our octofinalists, we had a QUARTERFINALIST! our senior Jordan broke thru octos to quarters with her ADS! This is no small feat; a quarters break means that Jordan was in the TOP 24 speakers in the NATION!

Our novices also showed out for this tournament! We had numerous novices break to novice final rounds of their events!

Will and Bridget were in the novice final round of impromptu; Will was 3rd in the NATION, and Bridget was 6th IN THE NATION!

Holly broke to the novice persuasive speaking final round! she was 3rd in the NATION

Lastly, Will and Bridget both made it to the novice final round of extemporaneous speaking. Bridget was 4th place in the NATION while Will was 1st, making him a NOVICE NATIONAL CHAMPION!

As a team, we were 6th in the NATION in division 2 of presidential sweepstakes – sweepstakes are determined by number of entries per team.

what a way to end this semester, and this 2023/2024 season of competition. stay tuned for next year! and check out some pics from our trip below!

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This weekend, we travelled to Chicago to the UNiversity of Illinois, Chicago for the annual National Speech Championship. Even though we only had 3 students for the weekend, they were 9th in the NATION! Full results are below

Communication Analysis – Ben Risley, Semi-Finalist

Duo Interpretation – Camsey Noonan and Jordan Shaibani, Semi-Finalist

Extemporaneous Speaking – Ben Risley, Quarter- Finalist

Poetry Interpretation – Camsey Noonan, Quarter-Finalist

After Dinner Speaking – Jordan Shaibani, Quarter-Finalist

Dramatic Performance – Jordan Shaibani, Quarter-Finalist

Impromptu Speaking – Ben Risley, Semi-Finalist

Prose Interpretation – Camsey Noonan, Quarter-Finalist

Prose Interpretation – Ben Risley, 6^th Place

Program Performance – Jordan Shaibani, Semi-Finalist

Program Performance – Camsey Noonan, 5^th Place

This weekend, the novices (the first year competitors of the team) went to a Novice Only National Tournament at Westminster College. The results are below:

Dramatic Interp, Holly, 5th

Duo, Holly & Will, Novice National Champions

Extemp, Will, Novice National Champion, Bridget, 4th

Impromptu Sales (non traditional event) Will, 2nd, Bridget, 5th

Impromptu, Will, 3rd, Bridget, 4th

Persuasion, Camsey, Novice National Champion, Holly, 4th

Poetry, Camsey, 3rd, Holly, 2nd

POI, Camsey, 2nd

Prose, Camsey, Novice National Champion

Crit, Will, Novice National Champion

Slam Poetry (non traditional event) Camsey, Novice National Champion, Holly, 3rd

For individual sweepstakes awards, competitors participated in 5 events across all speech categories including the non traditional events.

Holly was 4th place

Camsey was 2nd place

and Will was the Individual Sweeps Novice National Champion!

In addition to the individual sweeps awards, the team was 1st place for team sweeps and also won a Quality Award. The quality award is calculated based the average aggregate scores per speech.

cheers to a great weekend as we kick off the nationals season 🙂

We attended the annual Pennsylvania Forensics Association Annual Championship Tournament this past weekend in West Chester, PA. The team had a very successful weekend, with the results as follows:

ADS, Jordan, 3rd

DI, Jordan, 2nd, Natalia, 3rd, Holly, 6th

Duo, Camsey & Jordan, 1st!

Extemp, Ben, 1st! Will, 5th, Bridget, 6th

Impromptu, Natalia, 1st!

Info, Natalia, 1st! Ben, 2nd, Miles, 3rd

IPDA, Will, 6th

Poetry, Holly, 4th

POI, Camsey, 3rd, Jordan, 5th

Prose, Natalia, 1st! Camsey, 3rd, Ben, 5th

Crit, Ben, 1st! Will, 2nd

Persuasion, 1st, Holly! 4th, Camsey

It is important to note that persuasive is a unique event at the state level. The top 2 persuasive speakers in the state get a bid to attend IOA,  the Interstate Oratorical Assc. National tournament, which is being held in Chicago this April. Holly won 1 of the two bids, getting 1st in the state with her persuasion.

for sweeps awards..

Ben was 1st place!

Natalia was 2nd place

Camsey was 4th place

and for team sweeps, Lafayette was 1st place, maintaining our streak of being first in the country for the last 6 years!

stay tuned for the remainder of the season, nationals season is upon us 🙂 let’s go pards

As the semester comes to a close, the Lafayette team wanted to highlight our highlights for this semester! This was a jam-packed semester and a great start to the 2023/2024 forensics season.

in October… (busy month)

We travelled down to Harrisonburg, Virginia for the Virginia is for Lovers tournament at James Madison. In the very first tournament of the semester, Jordan had 2nd in DI and 6th in prose, Natalia had 2nd in info and 5th in impromptu, Ben was 5th in prose and a finalist in impromptu, and Camsey had 5th in poetry and 6th in persuasion. Overall, our team left with the 5th place sweepstakes award.

Our next tournament was the OchoIE, which we hosted and only had the novices compete in.  Camsey took 2nd in persuasion, 3rd in poetry and 5th in prose.

We travelled to West Chester later in the month for the Mystic tournament, hosted by our family at WCU.  At this tournament, we had Camsey 1st in Persuasive and William 1st in IPDA. The rest of the results are below:

Ben, 2nd, Editorial Impromptu
Camsey, 2nd, Poetry
Miles, 2nd, Extemp
Jordan, 3rd, Prose
Natalia, 3rd, DI
Ben, 4th, Prose
Natalia , 4th, Editorial Impromptu
Natalia, 4th, Info
Ben, 5th, Extemp
Jordan, 5th, DI
Miles, 5th, Editorial Impromptu
Miles, 5th, Impromptu

This was a great tournament for the team, and the students came home with the 2nd place sweepstakes trophy! woohoo!

For the SNAFU half of the swing, the results are as follows:

Camsey, 1st, Persuasive
Jordan, 1st,  DI
Natalia, 1st, Info
William, 1st, Extemp
Natalia, 2nd, Prose
William, 2nd, Impromptu
Camsey, 3rd, Poetry
Camsey, 3rd, Prose
Natalia, 3rd, DI
Natalia, 4th, Impromptu
Ben, 5th, Impromptu

At this tournament, we took 1st place in sweeps! yeehaw!

in November…

we hopped on a little plane to an even littler town in Illinois for the Norton tournament hosted by Bradley University in Peoria. Although we had no breaks, we had a great weekend @ Bradley (and got to eat some authentic Midwestern fast food)

& in December…

Our final tournament of the semester was the annual Off Broadway tournament at Hofstra University in New York. For the Saturday portion of the tournament, Natalia was 2nd in DI while Camsey was 4th in persuasion.

For the Sunday half,

Camsey, 1st, Persuasive
Natalia, 2nd, DI
Ben, 3rd, Extemp
William, 3rd, CA
William, 5th, Extemp
Natalia, 6th, Info

the season starts back up in 2024, with our first tournament at Bradley again! stay tuned & go pards 🙂