National Champions – 2008

Continuing from yesterday’s post, we count down my unofficial tally of the top ten high schools at the National Forensic League Championships in Speech and Debate from the year 2008. These are NOT the NFL’s official results; they have no such rankings at the national level. (For more on that, see my previous post here.)

10^th: University School – Hunting Valley, Ohio. This all-boys private school resting about ten miles east of Cleveland brought a squad of just seven students to the tournament in Las Vegas. All seven advanced into the elimination rounds. The showing in debate was especially strong for coach Peter Paik, capped by Michael K. Perloff and Jared F. Jones’ 8^th place finish in Public Forum.

9^th: Apple Valley High School – Apple Valley, Minnesota. The third straight top-ten finish for the Eagles and coaches Joe Wycoff and Pam Cady Wycoff, they were once again buoyed by strong performances in their “signature” events: original oratory (Jamaka Young - 2^nd place) and dramatic interpretation (John Hofmeister - 4^th place, Matt M. Porter - 5^th place).

8^th: Ridge High School – Basking Ridge, New Jersey. You can expect consistently strong performances from this program based twenty-five miles east of Newark. Coach David Yastremski led eight debaters into the elimination rounds in four different divisions at the Vegas Nationals, including Casey Buckley, who reached the final round in the House division of Student Congress.

7^th: Chesterton High School – Chesterton, Indiana. Shortly before the NFL discontinued their sweepstakes award, Chesterton won five consecutive national championships as a school from 1989-1993. Under the guidance of James Cavallo, the Trojans rose to prominence once again, advancing students in six different events – three speech, three debate. Michael P. Hadley and Tyler D. Fabbri captured the highest honors with a 12^th place finish in Public Forum debate.

6^th: Desert Vista High School – Phoenix, Arizona. This burgeoning program directed by Erik Dominguez qualified students to Nationals in all of the tournament’s six main speech events. Nine competitors from his squad out of eleven advanced to elimination rounds – in five different events – including two interpretation finalists: Amber Justmann (3^rd place in dramatic) and the Duo team of Brett and Bryan Ponton (6^th place).

5^th: Gabrielino High School – San Gabriel, California. About eight miles south of Pasadena lies yet another perennial powerhouse from the golden state. Derek Yuill’s program cracked the NFL’s top ten with excellent showings by Duo team Joy Gordo and Aaron Huang as well as orators Patrick Lee and Tina Nguyen, all of whom finished in the top ten themselves (8^th, 9^th, and 5^th place, respectively).

4^th: James Logan High School – Union City, California. The three-time defending National Champions saw their streak end this year, but not without posting impressive results across several events. The Colts advanced a dozen students into elimination rounds for coach Tommie Lindsey, earning the highest honors in national extemporaneous (Rajiv Narayan – 4^th place), dramatic interpretation (Austin Ashford – 9^th place), and original oratory (Sorin Chereji – 13^th place).

3^rd: Leland High School – San Jose, California. This marked the third consecutive year that the Chargers not only ranked in the top ten but also improved their ranking. Gay Brasher’s squad took home four of the highest speech awards, including a championship in impromptu (Taman Narayan), a 2^nd place finish in dramatic interpretation (Tania Odesho), and two 3^rd place awards (Varun Rajan, humorous interpretation and Roy Liu, impromptu).

2^nd: Bellarmine College Preparatory – San Jose, California. Runners-up for the second year in a row, the Bells once again illustrated their extraordinary competitive balance with top five finishes in both debate (Joe Grimes & Will Rafey – 5^th place in Policy debate, Parijat Chakrabarti & Vijay Sridharan – 4^th place in Public Forum) and speech (Evan Larson – 3^rd place, national extemporaneous, Stephen Elrod – champion, dramatic interpretation).

2008 National Champion: Eagan High School – Eagan, Minnesota. This is the Wildcats’ trend: fall out of the NFL’s top ten (2002, 2007), ascend to the national championship the following year (2003, 2008). Joni Anker’s team excels due to its extraordinary size and scope: every single one of her fourteen competitors earned an award, advancing in eight of the eleven main events. The one student who did not advance in a main event, Meghan Kreidler, competed in poetry (a supplemental event) and finished the week with a national championship. Resilience, excellence, and unparalleled depth make Eagan a unique forensic force to be reckoned with.