Four members of the Mount Pleasant High School Speech and Debate team competed at the NSDA National Speech and Debate Tournament in Dallas, June 17-20 at the Sheraton Hotel downtown.\u00a0 The tournament featured competitors from over 1300 schools representing 53 states and US International schools.\u00a0 Over 7500 students qualified to compete in 23 categories.<\/p>\n
Recent graduate Ja\u2019Quacy Minter qualified for the national tournament in Dramatic Interpretation.\u00a0 After failing to advance to the top 60 in that event, Minter was able to enter supplemental competitions in both Prose and Poetry, his areas of expertise.\u00a0 In the end, Minter was named a Semifinalist in Prose, advancing to the top 14 out of 378 competitors.\u00a0 In Poetry, Minter made it to the top 35 out of 326 competitors.\u00a0 It was the best finish for an MPHS Speech team member at nationals in school history and Minter\u2019s second national award.\u00a0 He will continue his speech and debate career at Tyler Junior College this fall.<\/p>\n
In Policy Debate, the team of Connelly Cowan and Taryn Thurman began day one against 180 teams from across the United States.\u00a0 In prelims, they debated teams from Delaware, Missouri, Kansas, California, Hawaii and Idaho to determine if they would advance to elimination rounds.\u00a0 In the six preliminary rounds, each round had 2 judges who would vote for or against a team, for a total of 12 ballots.\u00a0 In order to advance, a team had to have at least 8 \u201cfor\u201d ballots.\u00a0 Cowan and Thurman had 9 ballots for and 3 against and would advance to the elimination rounds.\u00a0 In round 7 they faced a team from New York and lost the round on a 3-0 decision.\u00a0 In round 8, they faced another team from Missouri and were eliminated on a 2-1 decision, just 1 ballot away from advancing to rounds 9 and 10.\u00a0 They finished among the top 58 teams at the tournament.\u00a0 It was the first appearance for an MPHS policy debate team at the national level and their first national award.\u00a0 Cowan will be a sophomore and Thurman will be a junior for the 2019-2020 school year.<\/p>\n
Reid Pinckard qualified for the national tournament in United States Extemporaneous Speaking.\u00a0 After not advancing in USX, he was able to enter supplemental competitions in Extemp Debate and Impromptu Speaking.\u00a0 He advanced to the third round of Impromptu Speaking that began with 520 competitors, making it into the top 90 or the top 17%.\u00a0 Pinckard will return for his junior year this fall.<\/p>\n
The NSDA National tournament wrapped up the 2018-2019 year for MPHS Speech and Debate.\u00a0 Team members will attend various camps this summer, preparing for the 2019-2020 school year and their first tournament in September.\u00a0 They are coached by Cody Morris.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photos:<\/p>\n
L to R:\u00a0 Reid Pinckard, Connelly Cowan, Taryn Thurman, Ja\u2019Quacy Minter<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four members of the Mount Pleasant High School Speech and Debate team competed at the NSDA National Speech and Debate Tournament in Dallas, June 17-20 at the Sheraton Hotel downtown.\u00a0 The tournament featured competitors from over 1300 schools representing 53 states and US International schools.\u00a0 Over 7500 students qualified to compete in 23 categories. Recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/mphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}