National Champions - 2011

In 1994, Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose, California became the last school to officially be crowned a national champion by the National Forensic League. For the following four years, the NFL held their annual speech and debate tournament without recognizing schools in any way save for the Bruno E. Jacob Award, which touted a school’s continued participation at Nationals across several years. Then, the 1999 tournament brought the School of Excellence awards, which allowed programs to claim a handsome prize if they amassed a specific number of rounds as a team. Three different kinds of awards were given – one for speech events, one for debate, and one to schools with a strong combination in both genres.

While the League did well to start, once again, celebrating team accomplishments at the national level, the excellence awards have an intrinsic flaw. By simply requiring a quota in order to win the prize, you would expect a league that continues to grow to field more and more high caliber programs. In fact, that’s exactly what has happened. While the 2008 Nationals handed out eighteen School of Excellence awards, last June the NFL handed out forty-one such prizes. I don’t begrudge any of the coaches or students any of the prizes they’ve won; those accomplishments are hard fought and worthy of high praise and deep pride. Unfortunately, when you see a growing number of schools attaining what is, theoretically, the highest competitive plane, you cannot avoid a growing debate about which programs really deserve to be called champions. I fear that, for high school speakers and debaters, the NFL now resembles the BCS.

I intend for the rankings that I’ve blogged here since June to supplement the accolades of the League, not replace them. Every school who takes the stage at the National Championships should swell with honor. It’s an enormous triumph. If you’ll indulge me here, allow me to recognize the ten schools who capped the previous season with singular team performances. For the first time, I believe, in the long history of the tournament, all of the top ten schools amassed 100 rounds or more at the Championships in Dallas.

10^th: Cherry Creek High School – Greenwood Village, Colorado. Coach Martha Benham qualified five speakers and nine debaters from this school that lies twenty minutes southeast of Denver, right by its eponymous state park. The debaters, in particular, gave the team some outstanding results, headed by William C. Silkman’s 3^rd place finish in Supplemental Debate and the 10^th-place standing of Public Forum team of David R. Simpson & Ilana R. Urman.

9^th: James Logan High School – Union City, California. Tommie Lindsey’s squad continues to entrench themselves among the perennial elites of the National Forensic League with another strong showing among the Colts’ speakers. The semi-final achievements of Duo team Jonathan Wu & Brandon Deadwiler (9^th place overall) and dramatic interpreter Jyoti Swamy (12^th place) complemented teammate Benjamin Mable’s 3^rd-place triumph in international extemporaneous.

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 Yestremski brought an even dozen students to Dallas, evenly divided between speech and debate events. Peter Vogel’s 4^th-place finish in national extemporaneous paced the speakers, while all six Red Devil debaters advanced to eliminations, led by Public Forum teams Tejus Pradeep & Brian Moore (3^rd place) and Christopher Winter & Adam Badrawl (7^th place).

7^th: Nova High School – Davie, Florida. Not only has coach Lisa Miller sustained the excellence of her Congressional Debate squad, earning 2^nd place in the Senate division (Jacob Gilson) and placing a finalist in the House(Cameron Isaacs) for the second year in a row, but she has rather quickly build a top-caliber speech program to match. The national titles won by Jamaque Newberry (dramatic interpretation) and Jared Odessky (national extemporaneous) cemented the Titans as a winning force on both fronts.

6^th : Eagan High School – Eagan, Minnesota. After spending almost the entire past decade in the NFL’s top five, Joni Anker and Chris McDonald’s just miss that mark while still fielding an impressive squad. Though a fourth straight school championship eluded the team, they certainly celebrated Garret Lukin’s national title in Prose, James Gage’s 6^th-place finish in humorous interpretation, and the top-ten standing of Policy Debate team Kyra Stephenson & Lyra Norman (9^th place).

5^th: Eastview High School – Apple Valley, Minnesota. Coach Todd Hering flew fourteen speakers from just south of St. Paul to the Dallas Nationals, and they impressively pushed an even dozen into the elimination rounds. Both Public Forum debate teams cruised through preliminary rounds undefeated while speakers ascended the top ranks in five of the six events offered. The highest individual honor went to Asheshananda Rambachan – 2^nd place in international extemporaneous speaking.

4^th: Gabrielino High School – San Gabriel, California. The runner-up prize in national extemporaneous went to Kevin Ye, representing the Eagles alongside his fellow speech finalists Brian Trinh & Jane Liu (5^th place, Duo). Once more, Derek Yuill fields an incredible squad and continues an impressive run among the NFL’s elite programs. This marks the first time in four years that a school reached the top five at Nationals based strictly on rounds earned in speech events.

3^rd : Lincoln High School – Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Like a catchy tune moving up the Billboard charts, the Patriots (coached by Matt Kenyon and Tony Martinet) climb one spot higher than their 2010 finish. The Duo team of Ryan & Christopher Wilkins likewise improved on their semi-finals showing last year to claim the national title, spearheading a solid effort throughout the events based in the oral performance of literature. Tessa Crosby and Shannon Brick each took 5^th place in the dramatic interpretation and prose reading events, respectively, for this burgeoning program on the Mount Rushmore State’s eastern border.

2^nd: Bellarmine College Preparatory – San Jose, California. Since winning their last National Championship in 2004, the Bells have never ranked lower than 6^th place, and Kim Jones’ team has staked a claim among the top three teams in the country for five years and counting. Not coincidentally, the school’s extemporaneous speakers have dominated for that entire span: Vijay Singh is the seventh Bell to reach the top three in that category (3^rd place, national). The squad’s debaters were just as impressive with Ryan Baer earning 7^th place in Lincoln/Douglas and Tanay Kothari placing 5^th in Congressional Debate (Senate division).

2011 National Champion: Leland High School – San Jose, CA. Gay Brasher’s squad only competed in five main events at the Dallas Nationals, yet they claimed their second NFL championship by advancing to eliminations in all of those events and placing five contestants among the top six. Kelly Wu turned in a 6^th-place performance in national extemporaneous, and the 5^th-place showing of debaters Jordan Olmstead & Nicholas Wu was only surpassed by their Public Forum teammates Ashwath Chennapan and Julian Crown, who claimed 2^nd-place. Leland’s triumph also marks the first time in at least a decade – possibly the first time in history – that the 1^st and 2^nd place schools both hailed from the same geographic district.