Over the last long weekend, South’s speech and debate team competed at the 2026 Jean Ward Invitational at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. Many schools from Oregon and beyond competed.

 “It’s the largest tournament in Oregon history. It’s over 1,000 entries,” debate team member Leah Nosce said. “It was all over… there were kids from California and Texas.”

Though up against tough competition, South managed to score highly in many events at the tournament. 

“I’m super proud of my parli [parliamentary] who made it really far,” debate team member Sienna Fyffe said.

“[Zev Wacks and Lily Yao] made it to the semifinals,” Nosce said, “which means that they’re, like, top four out of 70-plus teams. Valerie [Ostrovsky], who is one of our speech kids, made it to semifinals in both impromptu and informative speech. Jill Chihorek made it to finals in radio and semifinals in oratory. And I made it to finals. I got fourth place in prose.”

Following their strong performance at the Jean Ward Invitational, South’s speech and debate team is gearing up to compete in the online Stanford Invitational tournament in February. 

“We’ll probably send a couple of kids… a couple of parli [parliamentary] teams,” Nosce said. “It’s always fun, [and] it’s always exciting, especially for parliamentary debaters.”

Though public speaking can feel intimidating to many, the debate team says it’s not as bad as some may think. 

“It’s probably the best community I’ve had in any of the clubs or extracurriculars I’ve joined,” Fyffe said.

 “It’s a lot less scary than it might seem at first. It doesn’t have to be this massive commitment,” Nosce assured. “You can just come to a practice after school and try it out and see if you like it. We would love to see you.”

Article by Oscar Guillemin