Author: Alexis Hughes (Page 1 of 4)

This past weekend, the Lafayette Forensics Society hosted another two tournaments on our campus, courtesy of the SNAFU. SNAFU is a regional organization that runs tournaments for the Southern and Northern Atlantic region! There were two SNAFU tournaments held on our campus over the course of the weekend, also making this our first swing tournament of the season! Results for the first half of the tournament are below:

the team fielded different squads for both days of the tournament. Here are our day 1 competitors!

DI, Holly, 4th

Imp, Holly, 6th

POI, Kristen, 6th

Prose, Holly, 6th

on day 2, we had some repeat competitors and many new ones!

Info, Tyler, 6th

IPDA

Alexis, 2nd

Moumita, semifinalist

Alexis, 2nd place speaker

Moumita, 3rd place speaker

IPDA team sweepstakes 1st place champions!

Overall team sweepstakes, 3rd place!

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Results for the second tournament, SNAFU 2 on Sunday, are below:

DI, Holly, 4th

Ext, Will, 4th

Brynne, 5th

Imp, Tyler, 2nd

Will, 4th

Holly, 6th

Info, Hannah, 6th

Brynne, 2nd

POI, Kristen, 4th

Prose, Holly

Tyler, 1st place champion!

IPDA

Mason, semifinalist

Turner, 2nd place speaker

Amelia, 1st place speaker!

we fielded an entirely new debate squad on Sunday. Fun fact – we won debate both days!

Holly, 3rd place IE sweepstakes!

IPDA team sweepstakes 1st place champions!

Overall team sweepstakes, 3rd place!

the entire team was 3rd place over all on both days as well! woohoo!

Woohoo Pards! Thanks to the SNAFU board for a great 2 tournament weekend!

Last weekend, we attended one of our favorite tournaments in the fall, the VAFL or Virginia is for Lovers Swing tournament. We typically only compete in the Saturday half of the swing, which is hosted by the team at James Madison University. We had a great time in Harrisonburg, Virginia! We took a small squad of 7 and had a blast driving 5 hours south!

Our results for the tournament are below:

Holly, DI, 5th

Impromptu, Brynne, 3rd

Info, Brynne, 3rd

The Lafayette Forensics Society is back after a long 3 month summer vacation. We have been in the full swing of things since late September after a highly successful recruitment season. With a large squad in tow, the team has already competed in 4 different tournaments. The first two were online, and we hosted our annual OchoIE tournament. This year, the OchoIE was the first in-person tournament on the East Coast (and the number of entries definitely reflected that!) 

The first tournament the team competed in was the asynchronous  Pride of the Preseason. We had two competitors; results are below:

Brynne, semifinalist! Impromptu

Tyler, semifinalist! extemp

The annual Big Apple debate tournament was shortly afterwards. Our debaters showed out! Results are below

some of our entries for our coloring competition! Our tournament is special in that we have this coloring competition every year; this year we had a coaches and judges section as well as a student section!

Turner, semifinalist!

Turner, 3rd place speaker

Ben, 4th place speaker

Amelia, 5th place speaker

the award for our coloring competition!

Of course, we hosted our favorite tournament of the year, our OchoIE tournament, which was a huge success! We had a total number of 12 schools and 162 entries! Although our IPDA pool was a little smaller than last year (44 students this year) we offered competitors a novice category for the first time! This proved its own set of challenges, but was ultimately successful. We always have a great time hosting this tournament and could not have done it without all our alumni judges (thank you all!) and our team upperclassmen who helped run the tournament. 

For the OchoIE tournament, we only have freshman and sophomores compete in speech events, while we leave IPDA open to all competitors. Our students had a super successful OchoIE weekend; results are below! 

Prose, Jaritza, 6th

Novice IPDA

Kayla, 2nd

more coloring competition entries!

Chris, 1st place Champion!  

Kayla, 6th place speaker

Chris, 2nd place speaker

Varsity IPDA

Alexis, quarterfinalist

Turner, semifinalist

Amelia, 1st place Champion!

Hannah, 6th place speaker

Amelia, 1st place top speaker!

This is just the beginning…stay tuned as we keep competing! Go Pards!!

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

universal studios!

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!   

flying gator watch out!

Camsey, Octofinalist! POI

more universal studios!

the squad at NFA – small but mighty

Camsey, Octofinalist! After Dinner Speaking

Brynne, Octofinalist, After Dinner Speaking

Brynne, Octofinalist Ext

hey buccee

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! 

Nat getting her award!

cat!

go Nat!

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

a special surprise from a former teammate!

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!

sunset and Mo State Bears!

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!

the gateway arch in STL!

more sunset vibes!

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

thanks Berry for the donuts!

chick fil a in georgia!

surprise!

Bucceess beaver!

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

hiii 🙂

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

brynne & tyler practicing their duo!

Imp, Brynne, 4th

Day 2

POI, Camsey, semi finalist

Ext, Tyler, semi finalist