Speech and Debate

I'm trying to do a little catching up on blogging before we leave on our trip to England next week. This is something I meant to write about since last May.  Now that I'm officially years behind on scrapbooking, this is the only way I am even somewhat keeping up with recording events in our family life.

This past spring was Noah's second year to compete with NCFCA.  The first year, he did two speeches and ended up advancing to Regionals with both of them.  He had no expectations of going that far, so he was pretty pumped.  In fact, he just missed qualifying for Nationals with his Illustrated Oratory by one spot.

This year, he did four speeches.  His expectations were high.  He wanted to not just make it to regionals with all of his speeches - but to qualify for Nationals as well.  Just to make it more interesting, he also decided to compete in Team Policy Debate - debating about a resolution on the Middle East.  Here are Noah and his debate partner trying to look intimidating:

And here he is with his Duo partner trying to look silly:

Noah did qualify for Regionals with all four speeches (but not debate).  Here he is with some of his friends at the Regional Banquet, which had a very cool steampunk theme:

Obviously, Noah didn't want to dress up.  Of course, everyone has to wear professional attire at a tournament.  Here is a photo of Region VII's best (Region VII covers Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama).  It's strange to get used to seeing teenagers dressed up all the time.  If nothing else, speech has taught Noah to press his slacks and tie his tie.

At Regionals Noah advanced to semifinals with his Humorous Interpretation and to finals with his Illustrated Oratory.

He dropped a prop when doing his speech in the final round and got rattled but still got 4th place.  Once again, he missed qualifying for Nationals by one spot.

Noah has made many good friends in our speech club.  One of the things that warms my heart the most is seeing how supportive he is of his friends - you can see his outrage here when his friend didn't get a spot in semifinals:

But even more special to me is how genuinely excited he is when his friends do well - even if he didn't do well himself.  I've told him I think it's much easier to weep with those who weep than rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15).

Next year, I want to blog about each tournament as summarizing the entire year in one post is just too difficult.  I recorded all of Noah's speeches if you'd like to see them.  Each one is about ten minutes long.

Noah's Humorous Interp. of The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck

Here is an Open Interp about a stutterer called The Paperboy:

Here is a Duo on Lois Lowry's The Birthday Ball:

And here is the speech that made it the farthest, Noah's Illustrated Oratory on Rollercoasters:

He is already working hard on next year's speeches.