The Hotchkiss Speech and Debate Team ended the season with a major victory at the Deerfield Debate Tournament on May 2. After starting the year winning the Roxbury Latin Tournament in September, the team finished with a 12-0 win at Deerfield, where over 100 debaters from 12 schools competed via Zoom. Twelve Hotchkiss debaters participated, eight at the Advanced Level and four at the Novice Level. All twelve debaters won awards. Thanks to Co-captain Annabel Wallace ’21, who served as a Novice judge, Hotchkiss was able to bring three teams to Deerfield.

At the Advanced Level, the Top Advanced Speaker was Co-captain Beatrice Conti ’22 who scored 274 points in three rounds of debating.  Rahul Kalavagunta ’22, Conti’s partner, was the Second Place Advanced Speaker with 273 points. Conti, Kalavagunta, Stella Ren ’22 and Alex Cherenkov ’21 were the Top Four-person Advanced Team, finishing 6-0 with 1074 points.  Another Hotchkiss Advanced team, Sada Schumann ’22, Lisa Berlizova ’22, Jason Shan ’23 and Ein Jun ’22, was the Third Place Advanced Team.  Kalavagunta and Conti were the First Place Advanced Pair and Cherenkov and Ren were the Third Place Advanced Pair.

The four Novice speakers won every available award. Meilan Antonucci ’24 (269 points), Ben Who ’24 (268) and Peter Berlizov ’24 (267) swept the top three Novice Speaker Awards.  Who and Antonucci were the Top Novice Pair and Berlizov and Parth Jain ’24 were the Second Place Novice Pair. These four novices were the Top Novice Four-person Team, finishing 6-0 with 1068 points.

This ends another successful season for the Hotchkiss Speech and Debate Team. The team took part in 12 debate and public speaking tournaments, the International Independent School Public Speaking Championship, and the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championship.  All of these tournaments took place on Zoom.  Hotchkiss hosted two debate tournaments for the first time.  

Coaches David Conti and Thomas Fisher have been impressed with the dedication and good humor of the team this year. While everyone missed the opportunities to travel around New England and see friends from peer schools, they made the best of the new format this year and worked hard to improve.  “I can’t remember a performance by a team like this,” said Mr. Conti.  “Everyone had a great day – seven of the twelve Hotchkiss debaters set or tied their season-high at Deerfield.  It’s good to see their hard work this year pay off.  I’m proud of the performance and the work the advanced debaters did to support the novices. The teamwork has been great this season.”

The Hotchkiss Speech and Debate Team meets every Tuesday and Thursday evenings.  New debaters are always welcome at practices.