By Felicity Zhang — CCHS Correspondent
During the week of June 16, Iowa was not just the nation’s greatest producer of corn and pigs but the state with the highest concentration of high school speech and debate competitors.
Concord-Carlisle High School’s speech and debate team brought four students to Nationals this year after a season of success — an impressive showing for a team just beginning to make its mark in the forensics world.
Wilbur Moffitt (’24) and I (’25) embarked on our second Nationals journey after adventuring on CCHS’ first Nationals trip to Phoenix, Arizona last year.
Meanwhile, talented sophomores Anthony Babu (’26) and Noah Arthur (’26) ensured that their first Nationals would not be their last, with both advancing far enough to auto-qualify to compete again next year. (Anthony made it a little further, but more on that in a moment.)
Anthony and Noah qualified during the season to compete in the International Extemporaneous Speaking and Big Questions events, respectively. Wilbur and I were selected to represent New England in the team event of World Schools.
Photo by Felicity Zhang
From sanctions to… Kardashians?
My first experience competing in the World Schools format certainly felt like a worldly experience. Adrenaline propelled us through the preliminary rounds despite the physical exhaustion of sprinting through frenzied mobs to get to our competition rooms on time and the mental strain of switching topics.
One moment, my team was advocating the benefits of economic sanctions as a critical tool in international diplomacy; less than an hour later, we were denouncing them as a hammer that made every problem seem like a nail.
And not long after that, we were debating about reality TV celebrities like Kim Kardashian.
Between rounds, we frantically wolfed down the tournament sustenance of protein bars and lukewarm coffee, flipped through paper scraps with neon gel pens in hand to revise the next round’s cases, and obsessively refreshed Tabroom, the tournament website, all while griping about the inevitable schedule delays and the sluggish wifi.
The anxious hand gestures and pen-clicking peaked during the impromptu rounds. There, we had no pre-prepared cases — just an hour to formulate a strategy with nothing but an almanac and a dictionary to help us.
The intensity was at once pressure that compounded the strain from lugging around the CIA World Factbook and motivation that pushed us to perform at our very best. At the end of day two, every single CCHS team emerged from the fierce competition with impressive records, guaranteeing we’d advance to the elimination rounds.
Yet, like every tournament, the Nationals can prove unpredictable.
Rhetoric roller-coaster
My team, which had been undefeated and ranked first out of 198 teams in preliminary seeding, got eliminated on a controversial decision in the top 64. We could only face our frustration and continue cheering on our colleagues.
And our enthusiasm for our teammates was well-rewarded: both Wilbur’s team and Noah made it to the top 16 in their respective events. Then, to everyone’s delight (although less so their surprise), Anthony advanced to the finals.
The finals hall was so packed that the air conditioning did little to distinguish it from the scorching temps outside. Yet Anthony, standing onstage in front of thousands of enraptured spectators, was cool and confident as he delivered a meticulously crafted eight-minute speech on whether North Korea was preparing to invade South Korea.
The only contestant to receive roaring laughter for every joke and a standing ovation at the end of his speech, Anthony won the hearts of the entire audience even before he was handed the trophy for the national champion — and the trophy for winning the final round — at the awards ceremony that evening.
Nationals is a testament to the beautiful and sometimes chaotic way that high school speech and debate teams teach the arts of critical thinking, persuasive communication, and teamwork.
But unlike most arguments and claims made in rounds, one thing is irrefutable. With our team’s immense success, we couldn’t be more excited to continue turning previously wild and unthinkable dreams into reality in the season to come.
