Speech and Debate students are getting ready to prepare for the National Speech and Debate Qualifiers on March 2. There have been over 100 awards won by Strath Haven’s speech and debate team this year, with the team placing second in sweepstakes at the Dallastown Wildcat Invitational and fourth at the Ridge Invitational.
58 students on the Strath Haven Speech and Debate team have competed this year, with 35 of them being new to the team. At this point in the season, the team has earned 132 awards.
In Speech and Debate, there are different events a student can participate in. It’s divided into two categories: speech and debate. There are four events in debate and ten events in speech.
Freshman Lavanya Dixit, holding the most National Speech and Debate Association points for her class, recommends speech and debate for everyone.
“Speech and Debate is a great opportunity to learn and make friends,” Dixit said. “It’s honestly really fun, and it’s genuinely addicting. Like sometimes I just find myself on a Friday night working on a case with my friend. Overall, it’s improved my rhetorical skills, and I get to learn so much.”
History Teacher Jeffrey Kahn, the coach of speech and debate, feels optimistic about the team.
“The fact that the team has doubled in size, and we have so many new kids has been a lot of fun,” he said. “It has restored the energy that I felt around the team, and it has made it so much easier to do all of the things you have to do to be the team. It’s been really cool to watch all these new kids just keep coming and then coming and coming. And there’s new kids all the time.”
Here are some events Speech and Debate members recommend.
Ella DiBonaventura ’25 recommends Info.
“I really like Info. Basically, how you prep is you write a ten-minute speech on an informative topic and make posters for it. I chose this event because I wanted to make the posters for it. I really like doing info and would recommend it to anyone who is creative and passionate about a certain topic. It’s really interesting to hear the speeches.”
Linden Corbett ’25 recommends Congressional Debate.
“I participate in Congressional Debate. It’s basically an event of around 15 to 17 kids, and it’s really everybody for themselves. But it’s a really nice environment because you stay with the entire group of kids and compete with them throughout the entire tournament. You mainly prepare three-minute long speeches, but the trick is that there can be anywhere from 12 to 20 topics, so sometimes it takes a long time.
[Speech and debate] just really helps you out in the grand scheme of things. I would not be where I am right now with my skills in public speaking if it wasn’t for speech and debate. Mr. Kahn is an amazing coach. The team environment is a really good, strong environment and you’re never going to find somebody that you don’t get along with.”
Aditi Halpe ’24 recommends Program Oral Interpretation (POI).
“I do program oral interpretation. It’s a program, a combination of different media, so with movies and different stories like prose, poetry, some scripts, or you’re allowed to really use any type of media you want. In my POI last year, I had a documentary, and I also had a couple lines from Mean Girls. It’s really open to anything and you use all those different media to show a message or some type of thing that you’re passionate about. I would say [speech and debate] is like the best thing I’ve done in high school. I think I’ve just grown so much throughout it, whether it’s just having to improve my public speaking and get better at talking in front of people or even just learning to go and travel beyond places that you know about.”
Elizabeth Mboowa ’26 recommends Original Oratory.
“I do original oratory. It’s very fun to write your own speech, and I think researching is very fun. And I feel like it’s easier to memorize something that you write in your own words. I think it’s very easy to choose something that interests you too.”
Casper Stockman ’26 recommends Impromptu.
“I do the event impromptu, and I love it. There’s pretty much no prep for it. You have seven minutes to prepare and give a speech. Then, you pick a random topic and give a speech about it. For example, one of my topics was Taylor Swift lyrics where I had to give a speech pertaining to the lyrics. This is my favorite event, and I recommend speech and debate so you can do this event. A bonus is you also get Mr. Kahn as your coach.”
Greg Guron ’25 recommends Public Forum.
“I do a public forum. It’s an event where you’re on a team with someone else, and your goal is to debate on a monthly topic with a partner against the other team of two. Since I’m the second speaker, it’s more of reading. I don’t do a lot of case writing and research. I do a lot of the stuff for responding to other people’s cases. So I read a lot of resources about, like, all the different kinds of arguments that people could have. And then I do research on how to give different kinds of responses for different kinds of cases.
Speech and debate is one of the many things I do. So it’s an extreme balancing act to get everything done. It fits in there. I can say it has given me some stress, but as long as you’re good at time management, it’s not too bad, especially if you’re not doing anything else.”
DISCLAIMER: Both of the reporters who wrote this story are in Speech & Debate.
