This past weekend, Chesterton Speech and Debate combined forces and traveled to Fishers High School to compete in the largest tournament of the season so far. 50 schools and 800 student entries fought for top honors, with the team finishing in 3rd place overall. Chesterton brought a group of nearly 50 students, and 15 students made it to the final round of speech or the top 10 in debate. Notably, freshman El Thompson was the champion of Prose and senior Gigi Hanner won the event of Broadcasting.

The tournament held five rounds throughout the day. Speech had three preliminary rounds, a semifinal, and a final round. Debate had five straight rounds. By the end of the day, some students racked up more than seven hours in rounds of competition.

This coming weekend, the speech team hosts its home tournament while debate begins preparing for its postseason run later this month.

The following students were honored for their achievements at the tournament this weekend:

Addison Botts: 4th in Dramatic Interpretation

Jackson Dudek: 4th in Programmed Oral Interpretation

Zander Fish and Saanya Agarwal: 2nd in Public Forum Debate

Freedom Eiden and Riley Hawksworth: 2nd in Policy Debate

Gigi Hanner: 1st in Broadcasting

Patrick Hansen: 10th in Policy Debate

Lucas Koch and Rian Goins: 5th in Policy Debate

Milena Letic and Alaina McGrogan: 3rd in Policy Debate

Tiffany Nolasco: 5th in Prose Reading

Carmen Thomas: 4th in Prose Reading, 3rd in Original Oratory

El Thompson: 1st in Prose Reading

The team extends a significant thank you to its plethora of volunteer judges, including Isabelle Goodman, Anna Sanders, Mattea Sklut, Daniel Lowery, Andrea Drygas, Logan Riley, Kasia Wanner, and Finn Babjack.