Top of the World

P-Russ's recap:

SUBJECT: Gavelin' Eagles soar at the Top of the Mountain [sic]! 🦅⛰️

Good afternoon, NPS!

We had an amazing weekend down in Albuquerque and Sandia Park for the first tournament of our second Speech & Debate season: East Mountain High School's Top of the Mountain [sic] Invitational!

With 21 students competing, this was our highest ever attendance -- all the more impressive considering that many members of our team went camping.

And what a great first outing it was! The Gavelin' Eagles brought home five medals:

• Natashia Anderson placed third overall in her first ever attempt at Program Oral Interpretation!

• Avery Himmelreich was honored as the Top Novice Speaker, also in Program Oral Interpretation!

• The team of Hailey Thomas and Jairus Benally-Begaye tied for first overall in their first ever attempt at Duo Interpretation!

• ShiShayla Aragon was honored as the Top Novice Speaker in Dramatic Interpretation!

Full results have yet to be released, but it seems that many others made the Top 5 overall or were among the Top Novice Speakers in their events. I will send a quick update later with those additional placements once they're made public.

Our next tournament is the one we are hosting right here at NPS: October 28th's Atsá Invitational. We are so excited for this momentous event and will be sending out more info about it in the weeks to come, as there will be multiple opportunities for those who are interested to help out.

Hope everyone has had a great weekend!

Best,

Russell

Addendum:

Full results have been published! Additional props are due to the following Gavelin' Eagles:

• Tamarron Austin placed fourth overall in International Extemporaneous Speaking.

• Hailey Thomas tied for seventh overall in Impromptu (the tournament's most popular event!).

• Danica Becenti placed ninth overall in Novice Lincoln Douglas, which was also an incredibly crowded field.

Unfortunately, it's unclear which competitors from other schools are novices in the Speech categories, and so it's hard to see which of our other newbies placed well with that fact in mind, but Kiara Jim (Informative Speaking) and Ashleigh Mitchell (Program Oral Interpretation) likely were in the top three novices for their events!

Best,

Russell