From Friday, January 15, 2021, to Sunday, January 17, 2021, The Village High School Speech and Debate team competed at the University of Houston Cougar Classic tournament. For debate, all rounds were run synchronously, and for speech, preliminary rounds were held asynchronously, while elimination rounds (semifinals and finals) were live on Saturday. This is one of many university tournaments the team will be attending this semester, and Vikings did not fail to impress!

Sophomore Aditi Iyer swept first place in two of her events, Original Oratory and Program Oral Interpretation, and sophomore Caroline Hsu championed Dramatic Interpretation. Both students received bids to the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions (NIETOC). Other speech finalists include freshman Taylor Zhang and sophomore Kahani Malhotra in Prose and Original Oratory respectively. In addition, sophomore Jay Natarajan reached the Double-Octofinals round in Lincoln-Douglas debate.

“[The] UH Tournament was my second high school Speech and Debate tournament ever,” said freshmen Taylor Zhang, The Village High School Speech and Debate team historian. “When I made it to finals, I was nervous to participate in a live round. However, it went a lot better than expected! It was fun to watch the competitors perform their pieces and we’re lucky to have these platforms to participate in activities like these.”