Last week Indiana Speech and Debate teams competed in Salt Lake City at the National Speech and Debate (NSDA) National Tournament. I just wanted to let you know some of the area results. Chesterton High School took home the highest team award at the tournament – a School of Outstanding Distinction. The NSDA no longer awards an individual tournament school champion and instead utilizes a tier system. The NSDA determines placing based upon the number of rounds competed, but only counts the rounds of individuals who qualify for elimination rounds, typically beginning with the top 60 in the nation.
The highest tier is a school of outstanding distinction. In order to qualify for this award, a school must have an elimination qualifier in both speech and debate. Chesterton was able to qualify three debate entries and seven speech entries into the elimination round. Although only Lexi Justak (humorous interp) made it to the top thirty in Speech, Chesterton was able to accumulate enough rounds to qualify for the highest honor; placing the team somewhere in the top ten in the nation for the tournament.
The next tier are the schools of Excellence in speech or debate. Locally, Munster High School was able to win another School of Excellence in Speech; placing them in the top 20 for all Speech programs in the nation. Munster had a number of students break into the top sixty and saw both Trey DeLuna (dramatic interp) and Peyton Tinder (humorous interp) make it to the top thirty. The highest placing student from the region in a main event was Valparaiso’s Christian Sayers in International Extemporaneous speaking. Sayers made it to the semifinal round and placed 12th place overall.
Over a thousand schools from all fifty states compete at the National tournament. The competition begins with a district qualifier and the winners advance to the week long event. The result is the largest academic competition in the world with over 300 competitors at the national level per event.