Nationals

P-Russ's recap:

SUBJECT: Another tremendous showing at Nats for the Gavelin' Eagles! 🦅🌽🇺🇸

Greetings (for the final time! 😭), all,

The Gavelin' Eagles have returned from their third consecutive appearance at the National Speech and Debate Tournament. This year's competition constituted the centennial celebration of the National Speech and Debate Association, which was founded 100 years ago in 1925, and, like last year's, it was held in the NSDA's hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. Once again, we broke some team records, and, for the first (but certainly not the last) time, our team made it to the national stage during the final awards ceremony!

We will begin with that. Certainly the most incredible achievement of the week — and perhaps in our team's entire history — was the official recognition of Jennifer Kaskalla as the National Assistant Coach of the Year! Of course, we've known about this honor for several weeks now, but it was pretty special to hear CBS News correspondent and NSDA alum David Begnaud call her up and honor her before the thousands in attendance. You can watch a video I took of this special moment here (please excuse my hooting and hollering).

Additionally, as I mentioned in a previous email, Aspyn Kaskalla made Gavelin' Eagles history when her World Schools team, New Mexico Crimson, broke past preliminary competition, making her the first student to break in a debate event AND a main event at Nationals in the history of our school and of my coaching career (and only the second student to break period, again both for our team and for me personally). Due to their impressive record in prelims, her team made it one additional round before being defeated in triple octafinals. However, this defeat was a 2-1 decision, which means they ended somewhere in the top 60, if not the top 50 or even the top 40, teams in the nation (and beyond — this year's champion team actually hails from China!). When full results are released, I will follow up with their official final ranking. Great job, Aspyn!

I also want to shout out our other two attendees, both for making it to begin with and for their actual performances this past week:

• Natashia Anderson did us all proud in her third consecutive appearance at Nats, earning impressive rankings both in Program Oral Interpretation and Original Spoken Word Poetry.
  
  

• Kiona Denny also kicked some butt in Congressional Debate despite a particularly challenging preliminary chamber (the student who wound up going on to become national champion was in those first rounds with Kio!), and then she made herself and all of us proud through her efforts in Expository.

I do want to note that it was a bit of a scary week too. As you may have heard, on Thursday a young man took the stage and acted erratically, causing panic in the crowd that he might be a shooter. In the end, police found he had been unarmed, but not until after thousands of us had flooded out of the Iowa Events Center. Many people were injured in the stampede, and many more were traumatized by the event. I am glad to say we are all physically safe at least, though each of us will be reckoning with the emotional aftermath of what transpired for some time.

I'd like to extend a very special thank you to Ms. McCabe, who took a week away from a highly-deserved summer break to come all the way to Iowa with us. Ms. McCabe was an invaluable part of our delegation, as a chaperone, a judge, a cheerleader, and, for me at least, a friend! Thank you so much, Marty!

I also want to thank Coach Kaskalla and Coach Malyssa Egge, who both got themselves to Iowa to support our team. Coach Egge actually served as one of two World Schools judges not just for our team but for the entire district! Their commitment to supporting speech and debate for our school is absolutely staggering, and the Gavelin' Eagles are very lucky they aren't going anywhere next year!

And I want to thank my mother, Pat LaMarche, who was actually made an official honorary member of the Gavelin' Eagles this past year. Despite living two thousand miles away in Pennsylvania, she has supported our team tirelessly all three seasons and intends to continue doing so even in my absence! She also got herself to Iowa primarily to support my son Ronan, who competed in the Middle School National Tournament, but of course she was there for Tash, Kio, and Aspyn as well, cheering all of us on and supporting the team in the way closest to her heart: cooking us a few very tasty meals over the course of the week!

I'll end by thanking the entire Navajo Prep community — not just for supporting this team but for giving me a home these past three years. Teaching and coaching at this school has changed my life, and I will be forever grateful. But yeah, this is officially it for me. I will miss you all! My personal email is johnmartinrussell@gmail.com — please stay in touch!

Best,

Russ