The speech and debate team hosted the Coastal Forensic League (CFL) tournament with over 500 people at MHS on Oct. 21 and 22, speech and debate team captain Isabelle Cho said.
Both teams who participated this weekend were in the top ten for the event, speech and debate member Tanish Katkar said. Two of the speech and debate teams, one varsity and one junior varsity (JV), won their tournaments this weekend, he added.
“We had one team go to the Tournament of Champions last year and I’m confident that we’ll have at least two teams go this year,” Katkar said.
The team has a lot of potential and could get far this year, speech and debate team advisor Charles Schletzbaum said. They already have one bid out of two bids needed to get into the tournament of champions, he added.
“I do a public forum debate, which is the partner debate,” Cho said. “It is two versus two, and me and (my partner) Reba Prabhakhar, when we debate together, fill each other’s sentences. We are able to reflect ideas off each other and the balance has been amazing because we have debated together since last year.”
Qualifying for nationals is another hope, but it is a difficult competition to get into, Cho added.
“Last year, (Reba and I) were the first team to ever qualify for nationals for our school,” Cho said. “It’s great to continue on that pattern and continue to do well in tournaments.”
Cho coaches many novice groups of debaters including middle school speech and debate along with her own participation in speech and debate, she said.
“I coach over 100 kids, I go twice a week at the (middle school) campuses,” Cho said. “My goal is for one of them to win middle school states.”
For the team to grow their debate skills, they hire private coaches, Cho said. Cho’s coach in freshman year taught her how to debate from the ground up and that motivated her to coach others as well, she added
“I owe so much to Victor Umana (my coach) as well,” Cho said. “I knew nothing freshman year and now to be a coach myself, it comes full circle.”
Everything the team does helps them grow and improve their skills, Cho said. The money the team gets from running this tournament and all other tournaments comes back to the team itself, she added.
“In order to make money, we host the tournaments,” Cho said. “From the last tournament, we made over $10,000 and that is how we pay for private coaching.”
Hosting this tournament required setting up almost 100 rooms, Schletzbaum said. The club also spent nearly $4500 from past club funds in food expenses, he added.
All the money they raise gets spent on improving the club to make it the best possible, Cho said. “Everything in our club is a full-circle type of story,” Cho said.