WACFL 4 IE/PF

On Saturday, January 16, R-MA Speech and Debate traveled to Edison High School in Alexndria to compete in the Washington-Arlington Catholic Forensics League Preliminary Speech/ Public Forum Tournament #4.

WACFL, though originally founded to meet the needs of private schools, is primarily made up of a 40 public and private schools in Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia. Each preliminary tournament adds to a student’s bids for WACFL Metrofinals at the end of February and early March. Metrofinals will determine which six students from the Northern Virginia area will attend CFL Grand Nationals at the end of May in Ripon, Wisconsin.

Waking up too darn early (0500) and loading the bus in the cold and dark (0545) to leave campus by 0600 to eat McGriddles and McDonald’s, our students settled into the routing of locking and loading before we rolled into the parking lot at Thomas Alva Edison High School. Like a line of ants with grain-carrying mouths, our debaters and speakers started bringing in all the 12 files, the three cases of water, the case of energy drinks, and the two cases of beef jerky and cheese crackers that fuels the machine that is R-MA Speech and Debate.

We were joined by alumni Robert E. "Bo" Snitchler (Dickinson), Yuliya Orlva (Bryn Mawr), Sean Dunaway (Grinnell), and RK "LB" McDaniel (Hampton-Sydney) in the judging pool and the team members saw through interacting with the alumni, that speech and debate is not just a team, it very much is a family that stretches beyond graduation and beyond the walls of R-MA.

Following four rounds of speech and four rounds of Public Forum, the results were a solid statement on the strength of this new R-MA Speech and Debate team:

Public Forum:
5th Varsity... The Team of Gerber and Nell
4th JV... The Team of Collins and Pionkowski

Speech:
Coming Soon!

Following our victory, we went to Don Pablo’s to celebrate Gigi’s 18th birthday with sombrero and Amerixan Food. We only have two last WACFL Preliminary tournaments – one in Speech and one in PF – to secure our last slots for WACFL Metros.

Pictures can be found at: http://fglds.pbase.com