With the Forensics Speech and Debate Club’s season coming to an end, with only 2 weeks until State Championships and 3 weeks until Districts, it is time to look back at such a spectacular year. First off, a little overview for those who don’t know what Forensics is. Forensics Speech and Debate is a nationwide competitive academic activity. Similar to athletic sports in which it is challenging, competitive in nature, and requires regular practice, coaching, dedication, and hard work. A student has the ability to compete in debate which consists of 3 events, Public Forum (with a partner), Lincoln Douglas (single) and Congressional Debate. Speech, on the other hand, has 7 events, which range from interpretation which is acting published works along with the ability to create and perform your own statistical presentation to persuade or inform. If one would like any more information or interested in joining the team, they can contact Mr. Forte or Miss Papalski.

Now, to this year’s accomplishments and wow there were a lot of them! Racking up a total of 20 placements throughout 6 competitions this season, one thing is certain; Manville is making itself known in the circuit. While being able to say, “we took 20 trophies home” is a highlight itself .

On the debate side, they were able to make finals a total of 6 times with each debater being able to break to finals at least once this season, with 2 first places. Sophomores, Mouctar Diarra and Nick Imerlishvili won 1st in JV Public Forum. Debate captain Conor Johnson who was not just able to take 1st in Congressional debate, but placed as the second alternate in Congress for the 2020 National Forensics Speech and Debate Tournament at Albuquerque New Mexico.

Along with debate, the speech team was able to rack up quite a lot of placements, a total of 12 times to specific. Some major highlights being sophomore Chloe Gosk who placed 1st in Declamation. President and Speech captain Yiraldo Campos, who was able to take home 1st place for 3 weeks in a row, along with qualifying for the Tournament of Champions in Kentucky this April. Senior, Yiraldo Campos was also given the opportunity to go outside local competition and was able to compete at Harvard University this past February.

Looking back at the years prior, it is astonishing how far the Manville Forensics Team has come and as the season is coming to an end, it is exhilarating to imagine how far it will go.