The speech & debate team is only about five years old, but it has become one of the most successful academic extracurriculars at BHS, with members placing 1st, 2nd and 4th in their respective events at this year’s state tournament.
Senior Jessie Gill placed 1st in the state for humorous interpretation for the second year in a row. Senior Beth Moses placed 2nd for congress, with junior Anshika Niraj also placing 4th for congress. Junior Varun Jambunath was a finalist in congress.
Five years ago, debate coach and English teacher Nicole Majercak helped BHS alum Matt Baron restart the team. It has been growing rapidly ever since.
“[This year] we’ve had more students make semifinal and final rounds. We had three students in the top six this year, [while last year] we only had one. And in years before last, we never had a [top six finalist] except for Matt Baron, who placed sixth,” Majercak said.
“We had three of the top 18 students in congress this year. That’s out of 167 students in one event. We also had a ridiculous amount of pressure against us going into Jessie Gill’s final round,” she continued.
Senior Jessie Gill began her speech career her sophomore year and was the first delegate BHS student to compete in speech events. Gill started performing in the Beachwood Community Theatre as a child, and has performed through the Fairmount Performing Arts Conservatory, Cain Park and the Cleveland Playhouse.
Gill’s piece was titled “Superstar” and gained fandom as she progressed in the tournament. “I actually cut this piece at the end of sophomore year and never used it. I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted to frame it, and I couldn’t find a legal copy of the script to cite, so I saved it until this year,” she wrote in an email.
But what exactly does it take to prepare for a state or national tournament? Gill explained, “Speech events require hours upon hours of reading, writing and re-arranging before you can even consider putting a piece on its feet. After the cut is polished and introduction is finished, you start memorizing and developing characters and pace.”
“The piece should be as close to ten minutes as possible. It takes an absurd amount of preparation and rehearsal to time and clean a piece, and even longer to feel totally comfortable performing it.”
The process of qualification for the state tournament can be complicated. Members who wish to qualify for state tournaments must compete and place at qualifying tournaments. Similarly, qualifying on a national scale requires placing at national qualifying tournaments. You can not progress to nationals simply by winning states.
Despite incredible performance of the debate team this year, much of it was overshadowed by BHS athletics, such as wrestling and basketball. The weekend of the tournament itself was the same weekend as three other major events: wrestling state finals, basketball district finals, and White & Gold 2013.
“The Board of Education has been extremely generous with us. The resources that they can give, they have given to us. However, speech & debate, on the highest levels of competition, is a very expensive sport. It requires flying, staying in hotels… the most serious of our students need about five or six thousand dollars apiece each year to spend,” Majercak said.
Majercak hopes to find donors to help the team with the high cost of travel and top-level competition.
“We have many students who belong at travel tournaments who can’t go because of the financial situation,” Majercak said. “We are desperately looking for community members or people who see value in having our young people be highly educated and then return to the area because debate does form ties.”
Majercak wants potential donors to know that their contributions would help more than just one student.
“By going out to a state or national tournament, debaters get to expand their scope and experience debaters who are on a really high level,” Majercak said. “They return with more knowledge to share and benefit younger debaters.”
“The connections and skills that you obtain [from debate] are invaluable and, in my opinion, cannot be achieved through any other activity,” said senior debate team president Beth Moses. “Also, you win a lot of shiny stuff.”
