Nationals

P-Russ's recap:

SUBJECT: S&D Nats 2023 recap!

Good evening, all,

Yesterday, Ms. Ashley, Niejah Davis, Jordyn Begay, Natashia Anderson, Talen Becenti, and I made it back after a long, tiring, competitive, fun, tasty, and very worthwhile trip to Phoenix for the National Speech & Debate Association's National Tournament. As I mentioned before, this is the largest and oldest academic competition of this size in the world, and it is also insanely competitive. Thus, it's little surprise that we didn't take away any of the top prizes this time around. 😂

However, the team still did admirably! Jordyn and Natashia, who competed to represent the whole state of New Mexico on a World Schools Debate team with students from Los Alamos High School and La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, were not so far from breaking into elimination rounds, and Natashia also was quite close to breaking in her second event, Original Spoken Word Poetry!

We also got to see the greatest speakers and debaters in the country, and all four students were buzzing with energy and excitement about how to translate these lessons into their performances and to share ideas with their teammates during our next season. I'm pretty excited myself!

Ms. Ashley and I were so glad to be able to take this delegation down for NPS's first appearance at this storied event, and we are very proud of how they all did. Attached are a few more pics from the week, including one from a lovely dinner we had with the team I used to coach back in my hometown of Yarmouth, Maine!

I hope you all are having and continue to have a great summer. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, and an early Happy Juneteenth to everyone as well!

Best,

Mr. Russell