Every year, the National Catholic Forensic League hosts a tournament over Memorial Day weekend. This year, they are hosting the tournament in Chicago, Illinois. The Nixa Speech and Debate team had four students qualify.
One student, Athanasios Haldoupis (9), who is entered in declamation at the tournament, is thankful for the chance to attend.
“I’m just excited to get this opportunity at all, especially freshman year,” Haldoupis said.
Thomasina Brown (12) has been involved in the Nixa speech and debate program her whole high school career, but this year she has the opportunity to compete at the NCFL tournament for the first time.
“This will be my last Speech and Debate competition at the high school level, so I am excited to close out this chapter of my life at the national level,” Brown said.
Although the students that qualified for the tournament had already proved themselves as good speakers throughout the regular tournament season, the NCFL tournament is a whole different ball game. Brown has been practicing hard to live up to those standards.
“I’ve been preparing by revising scripts that I have used in previous years that I have was successful with,” Brown said.
Similarly, Haldoupis has been preparing his speech for NCFL, but during the regular season he completed in original oratory and extemporaneous speaking and not declamation, so the new script has required lots of practice.
“Preparing is a bit of a challenge because I’ve got a whole new script,” Haldoupis said.
