National Champions - 2010

As school years have kicked off, the competitive season for high school speech and debate is likewise gearing up. To honor the coaches and students in this activity, I’ll continue a series I began this summer outlining the top ten schools from the National Forensic League’s annual championship tournament.

FIFA Follies

***NOTE: This is one of my last-ditch efforts to purge summer distractions from my mind before returning to the classroom. Thus, if you’re looking for more thoughts on education, gimme a week or so. This is pure diversion.

If college football fans believe the rankings of the Bowl Championship Series are ludicrous, they should check out how the rest of the world assesses “football”.

National Champions - 2009

This year’s National Forensic League Championship speech and debate tournament concluded on Saturday, so I should have the 2011 rankings done by week’s end. In the meantime, we continue to countdown with the top ten schools from the Nationals in 2009. These are NOT the NFL’s official results; they have no such rankings at the national level. (For more on that, see my earlier post here.)

10^th: Eastview High School – Apple Valley, Minnesota. Unlike the California schools profiled so far, which often have dozens of miles between them, this is the fourth school south of St. Paul to reach the NFL’s top ten (so far).

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.

National Champions

It certainly feels like championship week with the Boston Bruins capturing the Stanley Cup last night and a title parade set this morning for the NBA’s Mavericks in downtown Dallas. Dirk Nowitzki and his teammates will also pass by hundreds of high school students seeking national titles of their own as the National Forensic League hosts their annual speech and debate championships in Big D. Sadly, while the individual orators and debaters can vie to be recognized as the best in the nation, their schools cannot be recognized in the same way. The NFL abolished their sweepstakes awards – which ranked all the participating teams based on their students’ performance as a group and dubbed a single school the year’s national champion – in October of 1994 at the behest of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.