Three Forensics Speakers Head to Nationals

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Staff Report

This weekend at the NJ/NSDA District tournament, senior Mark Rinder, senior Craig Chikis and sophomore Sage O’Toole qualified for the National Speech & Debate League National Tournament in Dallas, Texas. To qualify, students must finish in the top 3 in the state in their event. NSDA Nationals is the world’s largest academic competition.

“Since I have been coaching,” advisor Mr. Drummond states, “Mark is the first student in NJ to ‘triple qualify’ in his events. This is the maximum number of events that a students can even enter in at districts. The district chair, who has been coaching since 1988, said she can’t remember this ever happening before.”

Since the NSDA rules state that a student can only compete in one event at nationals, Mark has selected International Extemporaneous Speaking as his event. Mark is rated as the 17th best extemper in the nation, which is actually quite impressive in itself as FTHS only goes to a handful of “circuit” or national tournaments.

There were 51 teams in Public Forum debate at the beginning of districts, which is a double-elimination style tournament. Craig and Sage, who have only been partners once before, made it to the top 8 after seven rounds, which wound up being the last round. In this round, they debated the team of Ozbay and Malik from Princeton who are rated as the 2nd best team in the nation. (Ozbay actually won Extemp Debate at nationals last year). Craig and Sage won this round on a 3-0 decision, knocking that team out of the tournament and securing their spot at nationals.