Author: Alexis Hughes (Page 1 of 3)

Aaaand that’s a wrap for the 2025-2026 competitive season! Woohoo!

Our tournament season ended on a strong note. We of course finished off the season at our 

capstone tournament, the National Forensics Association in Nashville, Tennessee. We took  3 students to the tournament and had several national octofinalists!   

 

Camsey, Octofinalist! POI

Camsey, Octofinalist! After Dinner Speaking

Brynne, Octofinalist, After Dinner Speaking

Brynne, Octofinalist Ext

The team also won the 5th place sweepstakes prize in the Presidents Division II. This division consisted of teams with a total of 12-29 entries. Our squad was 14 entries deep – small but mighty. Congrats pards! And a special congratulations to our seniors 🙂

 

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Of course, we at the Lafayette Forensics Society

always end our year with one of our favorite tournaments ever, IOA! IOA is one of the most special tournaments in this activity for a few reasons. 

1. It is the oldest recorded forensics tournament in HISTORY. This was the 152nd IOA tournament (crazy!) It stands for the Interstate Oratorical Association – in other words, this is a persuasion-only tournament
2. The representatives are chosen across all 50 states – the top two competitors in persuasion at the state tournament are given bids! In our case, we had BOTH bids for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania! Woohoo! Congrats Camsey and Tyler for representing the great commonwealth of PA!
3. Every competitor who competes in this tournament is published! Stay tuned for more info on that!

 

Semester Recap!!!

And that is a wrap on another successful year of competition! We started the year off by going to the Hell Froze Over tournament in Peoria, Illinois.  We split squad and had some of the debaters at the (virtual) Gorlock tournament! We saw success there and the semester started shortly after that. 

During Valentine’s Day, we of course attended the Virginia is for Lovers Tournament in Fairfax, VA ❤️. We followed that up with a trip (drive) further down south to Georgia for the annual Novice National Tournament. Our novice debaters had much success there! We had a national quarterfinalist, semifinalist and finalist! The team also won the quality award!

The debate team finished off their season at the Pi Kappa Delta national tournament in Springfield, Missouri! We won a 5th place team award!

We had half of the team travel to Nashville for the National Speech Championship. The team took 10th place in sweepstakes! Woohoo!

After that, Scott took two of our seniors, Nat and Camsey, to the American Forensics Association National tournament! This isn’t a tournament that we go to often (the last time was 2022!). It was a special opportunity for our seniors! The two of them WON the 1st place small team sweeps!! Whoooohooo!

As we near the end of the school year and creep closer to graduation, we want to give one final pard sendoff to our senior team members, Camsey, Bridget, and Natalia. We will miss you guys!

Stay tuned for next semester! We will be coming in full force in 2026-2027! 

And as always, gooooo pards!

 

Last weekend, Scott took two of our graduating seniors, Nat and Camsey, to the American Forensics Association National Tournament. This isn’t a tournament that the team travels to often; the last time the team went was in 2022. However, since this is Camsey and Nat’s last year with the team ()

The three of them travelled across the country to Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Pictures and results from the tournament are below:

Natalia, 4th place in the NATION in impromptu!

Team sweeps, 1st place in Small Entry Sweepstakes! 

The team split squad over Spring Break and took the speechies to yet another national tournament in the heart of Nashville, Tennessee! Scott and the students drove 13 hours (whew) to Nashville to compete in the National Speech Championship. This tournament is great because there is an entry cap of 2 entries per event per school. What this means is that there is a limit on the number of entries every team can have, allowing for a fairer nationals environment. Our students showed out! Results for NSC are below:

 

Quarterfinalists

Camsey, prose

Ava, extemp

Nat, DI

Tyler,  Imp

Nat, Imp

Ava, Persuasion

 

Semifinalists

Camsey, POI

Nat, POI

Nat, ADS

Camsey, ADS

Camsey, POE

Camsey & Nat, Duo

Tyler, Crit

 

 

National Finalists!

Nat, 6th place – Prose!

 

The team also won 10th place overall! Woohoo! Stay tuned for parts 3 & 4 of our nationals series! Go pards!

 

Over Spring Break, we attended not one but TWO national tournaments! Half of the team (the debaters) flew to Springfield, Missouri, for the annual Pi Kappa Delta National Tournament. Affectionately shortened to Pi Kap (or PKD), this is the largest comprehensive forensics tournament in the country. This year was a special year for the tournament – Convention years happen every other tournament year and involve a special set of events and a fancy banquet/awards ceremony! Needless to say, we had a lot of fun in the Midwest.  Results are below!

Turner, Novice Excellence Award! This means that Turner was in the top 30% of debaters in the nation! Woohoo!

The team also walked away with the 5th place Small Entry Sweepstakes award! Go pards!

On Wednesday, we loaded up a Chrysler Pacifica and drove down to Rome, Georgia, for the second year in a row for the Novice National tournament. This year, we only took 4 debaters and the novices really showed out! We had a great time in Georgia enjoying the warm weather and a lot of southern food. Results for the tournament are below:

 

Novice National quarterfinalist, Turner

Novice National semifinalist, Alexis

Novice National finalist, Amelia! 2nd place

 

 

For speaker awards!! ——-

Turner was 4th

Amelia was 3rd

 

For team awards!

Lafayette won the quality award with 15.5 points per entry slot, narrowly beating the 2nd and 3rd place teams with 15.25 and 14.9 respectively!

Go pardsss! Stay tuned for the results for the remainder of our Nationals season! Wish us luck!

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This past weekend, we attended the George Mason half of the Virginia is for Lovers swing tournament! This annual tournament is joint hosted by the wonderful teams at George Mason University and James Madison University.  This year, the theme of the tournament was Heated Rivalry. We had such a great Saturday, and even got to see our former team captain, Will, who is working in Congress this semester! 

 

Results for the tournament are below:

 

 

ADS

Brynne, 6th

4th, Camsey

 

Crit

Brynne, 5th

 

DI

Camsey, 1st place champion!!

 

Duo

Brynne + Tyler, 6th

Camsey + Nat, 5th

 

Ext

Brynne, 5th

 

Info

Hanah, 6th

 

Persuasion

Camsey, 2nd

 

Poetry

Camsey, 5th

 

Prose

Camsey, 4th

Nat, 3rd

 

 

 

Sweepstakes awards!

For individual sweepstakes awards, Camsey was 2nd place overall!

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

Much thanks to the team at George Mason for bringing this day of competition together. Stay tuned as we enter our most intense part of the season yet – the Pennsylvania State tournament is this weekend, followed by a string of National level competition. Good luck pards!

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The Lafayette College Spring 2026 semester is back in session! After a crazy snow storm and two tournaments, the team is back in business. We have already gone to two tournaments prior to the beginning of the semester. This past weekend, we attended the virtual Gorlock tournament! We only entered 3 debaters in this tournament, and they showed out. We had a few novice competitors and a few speech entries as well. Results are below:

 

IPDA

Alexis, semi finalist

Turner, quarter finalist; 7th place speaker

Ext, Tyler, 5th

 

In addition to the Gorlock tournament, we attended the annual Hell Froze Over tournament. This year, it took place in Peoria, Illinois, where hell did indeed freeze over! Results for both days of the tournament are below:

 

Day 1

Imp, Brynne, 4th

Day 2

POI, Camsey, semi finalist

Ext, Tyler, semi finalist

 

 

 

 

 

This past weekend, we went to the annual Off Broadway tournament at Hofstra University! This was the last tournament of our semester (and the last one for the year!). We had a blast on Long Island, which also happens to be one of the biggest tournaments in our region! On the Saturday portion of the tournament, we competed in IPDA debate.

Results for the Saturday portion of the tournament are below:

ADS, Camsey, 5th

Duo, Kristin + Max, 6th

Poe, Camsey, 2nd

POI, Max, 5th

Camsey, 2nd

Prose, Camsey, 4th

IPDA, Amelia, gold (finalist)

For IE sweeps, Camsey was 4th!

For team sweeps, we were 4th place overall! Woohoo!

 

Results for the Sunday portion of the swing are below:

Duo, Kristin + Max, finalists

Brynne + Tyler, 2nd

Imp, Brynne, 2nd

Pers, Kate, finalist

Poe, Camsey, 1st place champion!

POI, Camsey, 2nd

Max, 4th

Prose, Camsey 3rd

For the Sunday portion, we competed in parliamentary debate. The results for parliament are below!

Turner, 2nd place speaker!

For IE sweeps, Camsey was 2nd! Woohoo!

For team sweeps, we were 4th place overall!

Thanks to Trent & the amazing team @ Hofstra for a wonderful weekend! 

 

                                                                                                           

Semester Recap

 

And this ends our semester of speech and debate for the Fall 2025 season! What a whirlwind it has been! We started the season off with an extremely successful and unprecedented recruitment season, with a record number of 40 signups! That being said, we have been travelling with a hefty team all semester.  With a consistent roster of ~25 competitors, we attended a variety of tournaments this semester.

We started off with the Big Apple online debate tournament, where we had Tyler as quarterfinalist and 4th place speaker, and Bridget win 9th place speaker!

Next, we travelled to Virginia for the annual Virginia is for Lovers tournament at James Madison University! The team saw major success there, coming home with an overall 3rd place team award!

As always, we hosted our annual OchoIE tournament here in Easton. This was the largest IPDA turnout we had ever had in recent OchoIE history! The tournament was wildly successful. We had our novice and junior competitors participate while the senior members of the team helped us run the tournament. We also had a number of the team alums helping us out, which is always great.

After OchoIE, we took a small squad over to Queens College in New York for the first SNAFU tournament of the year! We had a super successful weekend and finished the tournament with a 2nd place team award!

The team had a much needed break after multiple back to back tournaments. We finally attended our first swing tournament of the semester at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. We had a super successful weekend, winning both the Saturday and Sunday halves of the tournament overall and in IPDA debate! In addition, we also won a charity donation to 3rd Street Alliance, a local women’s shelter in Easton!

After another nice, long (Thanksgiving) break, we returned for our final swing (and tournament!) 

f the Fall semester. The Off Broadway tournament was a major success for the team, capping off a long semester of accomplishments.

Stay tuned with the team to see where we go and how we do in 2026! We have a lot of exciting tournaments on our schedule for the Spring semester! Go Pards!

   

This past weekend, The Lafayette Forensics Society went to our first swing tournament of the semester! For our readers who don’t know, a swing tournament in forensics is essentially two tournaments in a singular weekend. In other words, we were busy! We were hosted by the lovely team at Seton Hall for both halves of the swing. The Saturday portion of the tournament, the Ed Leonard Memorial, was a special tournament day – we competed in our usual 11 events as well as a supplemental event called Impromptu Sales (which was Ed Leonard’s favorite event). Results for the Saturday tournament are below!

ADS

Nat, 5th

Camsey, 6th

DI

Camsey, 1st place champion!

Duo

Tyler + Brynne, 3rd

Nat + Camsey, 1st place champions!

Imp Sales

6th, Tyler

4th, Brynne

Info

Holly, 6th

POI

Camsey, 4th

Prose

Nat, 3rd

Camsey, 4th

 

For debate, we had entries in both novice and varsity divisions. The results for varsity IPDA are below:

Hannah, 1st place champion!

 

Novice IPDA Finals

We had a closeout in finals with Ben and Alexis! This means that two Lafayette competitors were both in the final round (teammates do not debate each other; rather, Lafayette closes out the tournament and wins!) Woohoo!

 

Debate Speaker Awards

Iyun, 1st place varsity speaker!

Alexis, 1st place novice speaker!

 

For IE sweeps, Camsey was 2nd!

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

We also won the combined sweeps award and were 1st place overall! Woohoo!

 

For the SNAFU Charity Ball tournament on Sunday, teams got to support and make a donation to a charity of their choice! The Lafayette Forensics Society chose the 3rd Street Alliance, a local women’s shelter in Easton, PA. The results for the Charity Ball are below!

DI

Camsey, 2nd

Duo

Nat + Camsey, 2nd

Brynne + Tyler, 1st place champions!

Info

Holly, 3rd

Pers

Tyler, 6th

POI

Camsey, 3rd

Prose

Nat, 6th

Camsey, 5th

Holly, 2nd

For the Charity Ball tournament, debate was divided into novice and varsity categories. For Sunday, both novices and varsity broke to a semifinal round! Results for that are below:

Turner, Novice IPDA Semifinalist

Alexis, 2nd place, Novice IPDA Finalist

Iyun, Varsity IPDA Semifinalist

Hannah, Varsity IPDA Finalist, 2nd place!

IPDA Speaker Awards 

Alexis, 3rd place Novice Speaker

Turner, 1st place! (Top novice)

Iyun, 2nd place Varsity speaker

For IE sweeps, Camsey was 2nd place again!

 

For team sweepstakes, the Lafayette squad won debate on Sunday and was 1st place again! We also won overall/combined sweepstakes on Sunday! Woohoo!

We had an extremely successful weekend at these two tournaments and have had an even more successful season so far! Our last tournament of the semester is fast approaching – stay tuned for the Fall Semester synopsis and updates for next semester!

This Saturday, we went to Queens, New York for the Queens College Alumni Tournament! This was a Saturday tournament, so we only had one night in Queens. Despite our quick trip, we had a great time in the city and ate some dim sum  and Mexican food! Although we took a small squad (2 returners and 6 novices) they performed incredibly and we had a super successful weekend! Results for the tournament are below:

 

ADS

Camsey, 4th

 

Nat, 1st place champion!

 

DI

Camsey, 1st place champion!

 

Duo

Camsey & Nat, 1st place champions!

 

Imp

Finalists, Michaela & Turner

Amelia, 5th

Nat, 2nd

 

POI

Camsey, 3rd

Nat, 2nd

Prose

Camsey, 3rd

Nat, 2nd

 

IPDA

For IPDA semis, we had a partial closeout. Michaela, Turner and Alexis were all semifinalists. This resulted in a walkover to finals for Turner and a semi final round for Alexis.

Michaela finished the tournament as a semifinalist, in 4th place overall!     

For finals, Lafayette had a closeout! This means that two Lafayette competitors (both Turner and Alexis) were IPDA finalists. Teammates do not debate each other; instead, the 1st seed automatically progresses. Results are below:

Alexis, 2nd

Turner, 1st place champion!

 

IPDA speaker results

Turner, 2nd

Michaela, 3rd

 

Sweepstakes results!

Individual Sweeps

Camsey, 2nd place overall!
Nat, 1st place champion!

 

Team Sweeps

2nd place!

Debate, 1st place!!

Overall, the Lafayette squad was 2nd in team sweepstakes! What a great weekend!