The Chesterton High School Speech & Debate team saw three of its entries make the top twenty-four at the first of two ultra-competitive national competitions. 516 schools and nearly 3,000 individual competitors from thirty-five states gathered virtually to compete at the NCFL Grand National Tournament during Memorial day weekend.
CHS’s top performers were the Duo Interpretation partnership of juniors Miranda Miller and Natalie Nunez. The two performed a selection from “Living Out” by Lisa Loomer, a play that showcases the development of an understanding between two mothers who hail from two completely different worlds of experiences. Miller and Nunez qualified for the octofinal elimination round comfortably beneath the cut line by five ranks. They won that elimination round easily with two of the three judges ranking them first and the other scoring them as second. They advanced out of quarters after placing second in that round and tied for first in their semifinal round. In the final round, the duo received judge rankings of 1, 2, 2, 3, and 4. The result was good enough to achieve National Runner-up status to students from Apple Valley, Minnesota. The achievement of making final round as well as coming in second place overall is the best at Chesterton in this event since Karly Carden and Isabelle Portugal came in fourth place in 2016. Interestingly, Carden is the coach of this duo and her experience in preparing her team seems to have paid off.
Senior Lily Roberts also advanced into the elimination stage of the competition with her Dramatic Interpretation of “Monster: My True Story” by Aileen Wuornos. Roberts cruised into the elimination rounds after securing a top ten placing in the preliminary rounds. She tied for the top spot in the Octofinal round, but fell in her Quarterfinal round; forcing her to settle for top 24 at the tournament.
Juniors Mark Jewison and Milena Veltri advanced to the elimination rounds in Policy debate with a 4-1 record in the preliminary rounds, placing them as the 19th seed in the 32 team tournament bracket. In their first elimination round, they defeated the 14th seeded team from Hawken, Ohio before losing to the third seed from Blue Valley Southwest, Kansas. That team would go on to place third overall for the tournament. Jewison and Veltri continued debating the criminal justice reform topic that they had all season.
Chesterton was also represented at this tournament by speech team members Gigi Hanner, Dylan Leavitt, Hamza Sahli, Anna Sanders, Mattea Sklut; as well as by debaters Saanya Agarwal, Gretta Burke, Freedom Eiden, Zander Fish, Jonathon McClure, and Nathan Osborn. The team concludes their season at the second of their major national tournaments, the NSDA Speech and Debate Nationals in two weeks.