District Congress

P-Russ's recap:

SUBJECT: Gavelin' Eagles are heading to Nationals once again! 🦅🌽🏆

Good morning, all!

Yesterday, while a blizzard blanketed northwestern New Mexico, trapping us in Albuquerque for a second night, Marcus Nahalea qualified for the 2024 National Speech and Debate Tournament!!!

Marcus was competing in the House chamber of Congressional Debate against some of the toughest debaters from all across the state. He finished 3rd in his morning session, easily breaking through to the finals round that afternoon. In the end, Marcus ranked 4th overall, beating out over thirty competitors to earn 1 of just 6 slots that have been awarded for Nationals this early in the postseason.

A few more fun facts about Marcus's accomplishment:

• Only 3 schools in the state have earned spots at Nats so far this year. Thanks to Marcus, Navajo Prep is one of them!

• The other two are Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School in ABQ and Los Alamos High School – two of the oldest and most successful teams in NM.

• Unsurprisingly, everyone who qualified was a 12th-grader, including Marcus, but Marcus qualified with far less experience than the others. Not only are Los Alamos's and Cottonwood's teams plenty old enough for these kids to have competed throughout their high school careers, but both of them have robust middle school programs as well, meaning many of Marcus's toughest opponents were in their fifth years of competition! Marcus's achievement is especially impressive when you remember that s-and-d was not even an option for half of his high school career. 😢

• This was a state tournament too, so Marcus's success makes him an NMAA state champ! Technically a third runner-up, but still, he'll be getting a fancy pin and medal at States in two weeks.

Clearly, we are very proud of our Gavelin' Eagle. Nationals will be in Des Moines, Iowa, in mid-June, and I'm very excited to take Marcus – and whoever else might manage to qualify (the biggest opportunities to earn a spot have yet to come).

The rest of our delegation did admirably as well! Of particular note is Aspyn Kaskalla, who finished 10th in the highly competitive Senate, but our other 6 representatives all did us proud too: Senator Tamarron Austin, Representative Kaleb Jones, Representative Danica Becenti, Representative Haylei Redhouse, Representative Natashia Anderson, and Representative Kyryk Begay.

Major thanks to Coach Kaskalla for her ceaseless support and for joining me to advocate for our team at the Spring Coaches' Meeting (which took place alongside the championship), and also to Louise Atene, who shepherded us all about despite the weather — and who wound up sacrificing her entire weekend as a result of these weather issues (she's sticking around to pick up one of our normal weekend bus routes). Also, thanks to Mr. Gordon, who joined us with his robotics team at the hotel last night and who is letting us crowd onto his bus for the ride back here shortly, and to Mary Dickey for driving said bus.

And of course, a big thanks to our community of judges whose volunteerism made this possible for us!

Less than two weeks until States! Time to start prepping!!!

Best,

Russell