The Speech and Debate team has had a long history of success, and on March 6, the team became league champions for the 10th year in a row. It is a great accomplishment and the team members who have put a great amount of effort and practice into improving their cases and manuscripts are proud to have contributed to the team’s legacy.

One of the team’s main goals for the year was to win league and specifically to beat their long-standing rival, Redlands, which they did. Team co-captain and senior Clayton Becker was especially motivated to win the league championships this year and was very pleased with the Speech and Debate team’s outcome at the state qualifying tournament.

“We were worried at the beginning of the year because the Redlands Speech and Debate team, who has been our nearest competitor for the last couple of years, had a much larger team because they had many freshmen. However, at the end, we managed to put in all of the work that was necessary and won by a pretty significant margin,” Becker said.

From the beginning of the year, team members were put under a considerable amount of pressure to perform at their best and continually improve. Co-captain and senior Sophia Helland is extremely proud of how hard her fellow team members have worked.

“I’ve been really glad to get to be a co-captain of the team this year, and it’s been an incredibly meaningful experience getting to see the team win our 10th year of league championships. It’s a huge accomplishment, and I’m so proud of how much work everyone put in at the end and how much we rallied to make it happen,” Helland said.

How well the team did at the state qualifier tournament determined the team’s ranking in the league. The team is sending 22 people to the State Championship on April 15-18, and Claremont’s students came in first in eight out of the 17 forensic events. There was not a single event that Claremont did not at least place in at the state qualifier, and a student from Claremont qualified for state in almost every event. The Speech and Debate team has been very successful, and rising to that success was not easy.
Speech and Debate events are all very complicated, and the amount of preparation and work that goes into writing and practicing speeches and cases is immense.

“I consistently practice for 3-5 hours a week on my own free time in addition to the team practices to perfect my speech. Although it is hard work, the payoff is worth it: the awesome finished product, the trophies, and the contribution towards winning our speech and debate league again,” Speech and Debate member and junior AJ Pena said.

There was some worry at the beginning of the year as to how the team would fare due to the many great members that graduated last year, yet the freshmen, many of whom had begun debating and speaking during the summer institute that the team holds yearly, were very promising from the start. One of the of the most impressive was freshman Jack Xiao. Xiao won the league overall individual sweepstakes award, meaning that he did extremely well in all of his events, which is especially impressive for a novice.
The Speech and Debate Team is full of talent, and the team consists of students who are motivated to achieve their best. The students who have qualified to state are looking forward to the state tournament, which will be held at Mission College in Santa Clara, where they will no doubt represent CHS very well.