This past weekend, the Speech team traveled to Crown Point High School for the Northwest Indiana District Tournament. This tournament gave students the opportunity to earn a spot at the National Tournament in June, which will be held in Louisville, Kentucky. In speech sweepstakes, Chesterton came in 2nd place, but when adding in the debate team’s point acquired from District Debate and Congress earlier this year, Chesterton came out on top. The District series contains three individual tournaments, but at the end of District Speech, all districts points are added up to determine an overall champion of the series. 

Notably, Dylan Leavitt won both of her events, Informative and Programmed Oral Interpretation (POI). Additionally, Mark Jewison qualified in his third event this year, having qualified in Policy Debate at the District Debate tournament and in the Senate at District Congress.. He is the only Chesterton student to have qualified in each of the three district tournaments, an accomplishment very few people ever reach. 

When a student qualifies in multiple events, they have the difficult decision of choosing only one event to go to Nationals in. Jewison and Leavitt were the only two CHS competitors faced with this choice. Jewison chose to compete in Policy Debate with partner Milena Veltri, while Leavitt chose to compete in POI. 

Only the top two in each district event earn a spot at Nationals, however, if someone in the top two spots earns a top-two finish in an additional event, and decides to compete at nationals in that additional event, the next person in line gets to take their place. So if the winner of an event decides to go in something else, the person sitting in 3rd place goes to Nationals.

The following students placed in the top 6 in their events: (national qualifiers and their events are in bold)

• Hannah Anders: 3rd in Informative
• Katie Asbury: 6th in Humor
• Freedom Eiden: 4th in International Extemporaneous
• Lilly Ewen: 6th in Drama 

• Gigi Hanner: 4th in Original Oratory, 3rd in United States Extemporaneous
• Josh Hoover: 4th in Humor

• Mark Jewison: 1st in United States Extemp
• Lucas Koch: 6th in International Extemporaneous
• Elsa Leady: 3rd in Humor

• Dylan Leavitt: 1st in Informative, 1st in Programmed Oral Interpretation
• Milena Letic: 5th in United States Extemp
• Miranda Miller: 5th in Drama

• Natalie Nuñez: 4th in Drama, 3rd in Original Oratory

• Nathan Osborn: 2nd in United States Extemp

• Hamza Sahli: 1st in International Extemporaneous
• Carmen Thomas: 5th in Original Oratory

Next weekend, the team heads to Fishers High School to compete for the state title. Then, the students get a well-deserved break before heading to Kentucky this summer to compete nationally.