September once again brings the start of a new school year, and with it, a new debate season. The 2012-13 season was a great success, as students who began with us as 6th graders competed in their final year of middle school debate.   This year’s going to be a bit different.   With about 3 quarters of the kids in 6th or 7th grade, our squad this year is very talented, but young.  And while it’s always fun to have a squad full of heavyweights, the work that will turn the novices into those heavyweights is equally, if differently, rewarding.  So how’s the team doing so far?  Let’s take a look:

September 

The end of September saw Kudos send a small group of competitors to Long Beach, where they participated in The Jack Howe Invitational.  We don’t have a ton of pictures, but we do have a couple.

Celena and Kaylynn broke to octafinals in varsity PF.

Celena and Kaylynn diligently prepare for battle.

But it wasn’t just our high schoolers who did well against the tough competition.  Kelly, 7th grade, and Cecily, 8th, also broke to octafinals in public forum debate.  Here we see them getting a trophy IOU.  (The tournament had accidentally ordered the wrong trophies.  They mailed the correct ones to us a week or two later.)

Kelly and Cecil trophy at Jack Howe!

Michelle and Amy also broke at Long Beach in their very first tournament.

October

Just a week later, Gabriellino High School in San Gabriel held the first middle school only invitational of the year.  It provided a great opportunity for some of our new kids to get their feet wet, while our most experienced debaters battled it out for hardware.

Bryan and Vincent compete in their first debate tournament.

First competition rounds for Phoebe and Scarlet too!

Catherine, an experienced debater, was partnered with 1st timer William.  The two battled it out and finished with a winning record.

Catherine and William do some pre-round prep.

In the end, our most experienced debaters saw to it that we wouldn’t leave empty handed.  Against a large field and some very tough competition, Kelly and Cecily were again able to bring home the goods.  Fortunately, Freeman was there to document the moment with yet another fantastic photograph:

Two Kudos students competed at the Oxford Debate Invitational on the weekend of October 19th.  Jon Lee, competing for Oxford, earned top speaker in novice LD.  Meanwhile, Edison, competing for Kudos, went 6-0 in prelims in varsity LD, earned the top seed, won top speaker, and finished 2nd after losing a split decision in a very close final round.

Next up was our first middle school league speech tournament, held at Jefferson on the evening of the 24th.  Strangely, the photography improved dramatically beginning at this tournament.

The Kudos family is in the house.

Courtney, Caty, Miranda, and Vicky

Ivan attends his first tournament!

Catherine performs her storytelling speech.

Huge fields made this an extremely difficult tournament for every competitor, and lots of very strong students walked away empty handed.  Fortunately, Kudos found triumph in expository, as both Caty and Melanie brought home the hardware:

Melanie and family are happy as she trophies in her first tournament.

Caty’s smiling, but she’s actually mad she didn’t get first. That’s called being a beast.

Finally, on the weekend of the 26th, Kudos took a small squad to The Schurr Classic, a high school invitational.  Saturday featured competition in speech events, and Caty once again brought home hardware with her expos speech:

The good news is that we hired Freeman to coach debate, not take pictures.

On Sunday, a few of our PF teams competed in debate, while several of our PF and LD students competed for their schools.  This meant that our kids ended up debating each other several times.  Celena was paired with Kelly for this one, and they made quarterfinals.

Kelly adjusts to her role as first speaker.

Sharne and Nora, competing for Arcadia, battle our brave 6th graders, Anjee and Joshua, at Schurr.

Audrey, meanwhile, made it to semifinals, but was walked over on coach’s decision, as her opponent in semis was one of her San Marino teammates.

Emerson, in his first LD tournament, draws Audrey as his competition in the second round.

Whew.  That took a while.  At any rate, it’s been a very busy first couple of months.  Our new kids are already showing so much improvement, and we’re really excited to see them continue to grow as the competition seasons continues.

Complete Winners List for September/October:

*High school student competing under the name of his/her high school.

All of us here at Kudos were so excited to learn recently that the Pasadena Star News reported on our Policy Debate national champions, Jerry and

Kirk.  We’re so proud to see our students and program featured in the flagship news source for the San Gabriel Valley.

Click here to read the entire http://printrestaurant.com/online/ story.

June:  A full year of work completed, leaving just one last task.  A trip out of state, to compete against 95 schools from 29 states and 3 countries; a challenge unlike any other; an epic battle from which only the strongest and most prepared can possibly hope to emerge victorious; an event called:

The 2013 NJFL National Tournament!

This year’s competition was held in Birmingham Alabama and was, without any exaggeration, the most difficult middle school tournament in history.  Large fields and brutal breaks meant a lot of very good entries would fail to advance.  In such a cutthroat environment, how would our Kudosians fare?

The team gathers in the lobby of the tournament on Saturday morning for one last photo shoot before a day of travel back to Los Angeles.

But let’s rewind.  Four days prior, our warriors packed their tubs and business formal clothes, and boarded a plane to Alabama.

The mood was high. We were all excited to put our training to the test. Yet an underlying seriousness of purpose lay just beneath the jovial banter.

Wheeler and Kirk just figure they’ll wait till the crowd clears at the baggage claim in Alabama. Strauss, Tyson, Victor, and Alex are less patient.

We checked into the hotel and, after a long day of travel, everyone was happy to enjoy a delicious meal.

A hearty dinner the night before battle ensures vigor in the morning.

Before we knew it, the day of reckoning had arrived.  The students had assembled and were ready to fill the vans and head to the site.

Adrenaline pumps before the first day of competition.

Until… Car Trouble!  One of the vans wouldn’t start!  Yes, many nerves were frayed Wednesday morning as the coaches scrambled to transport all the competitors in just one van.  Two trips were made and, in the end, everyone made it rounds on time.  Whew!

Justin, Angela, Caty, Mei, and Jack make adjustments between rounds.

But even as dedicated a group as this found some time for frivolity:

Not prepping… what’s this?  Middle-schoolers on their phones?  Shocking!

Spin your partner round and round.

Yes, apparently, Kelly and Jonathon found time to enter a square dancing contest while at the tournament.

Hold the phone everybody: breaking news on proposed peace talks with the Taliban!  How will this impact the negotiated peace alternative we’re presenting on neg?!

After two long days of furious competition, prelims and early breaks rounds were finished.

Friday brought final rounds and awards.

First up were OO finals.  Stanley Yu and Melinda Guo both made the cut to the top 6.

Stanley and his dad discuss Stanley’s final round performance with Wheeler.

Of course, there was still the Policy finals to come, featuring Jerry and Kirk.  Um…  Tragically, we actually don’t have any pictures from that round.  But that’s OK, because we have plenty of pictures of them at awards.

And speaking of awards, all the battles were fought, and the winners chosen, and it was time to gather in the theater.

A full house assembles to see…

…who will get these.

In policy debate, Joey and Natalie earned awards as quarterfinalists, pictured below.  Who knows how much further they could have gone, if poor bracket luck hadn’t reared its head.

In quarters, Joey and Natalie  ended up hitting Jerry and Kirk.  Teammates don’t debate against one another, so the higher seed – Jerry and Kirk – walked over the lower seed – Joey and Melinda.  It’s standard procedure, but a really tough way to get knocked out, as it doesn’t entail actually losing an outround.

Joey and Natalie are awarded for  their quarterfinals berth.

Also, Jerry and Kirk each won an award for finishing among the top ten speakers in policy.

Of course they had to come back to pick up those national champion trophies as well.

Congratulations, Kirk and Jerry, on your first place finish. You guys really deserved this.

All told, 18 different Kudos students earned a total of 25 awards (counting a team award, policy for example, as a single award).

Jenny: OO and Public Forum      Jack: Public Forum

Jax: Congress and Public Forum        Justin: Extemp and Public Forum

Victor Q: LD and Congress     Victor L: Public Forum

Audrey: Extemp                                          Caty: Public Forum

Angela: Extemp and Public Forum    N’Angela: Public Forum    Nora: Public Forum

Stanley: OO     Melinda: OO, HI, and Declamation     Alex: Congress and Public Forum

Thanks to all this student achievement, Wheeler got to get up on stage too, to receive two prestigious School of Excellence awards.

So anyhow, after everything was over, we had a last group pose with all the hardware:

Almost everyone is included in this picture.  Jax and Nora had already left.

Here is our complete results list:

School Awards:

Debate School of Excellence 2013 – Awarded to the top 6 of 93 schools in debate.

Overall School of Excellence 2013 – Awarded to the top 3 of 93 schools overall.

Individual/Team Awards:

Jerry Wang and Kirk Wu:  National Champions – Policy Debate

Kirk Wu:  Quarterfinalist – Extemp

Jerry Wang:  Quarterfinalist – OO

Stanley Yu:  4th Place – OO

Melinda Guo:  6th Place – OO

Melinda Guo:   Semifinalist – HI

Melinda Guo:   Semifinalist – Declamation

Jenny Li and Jack Li:  Double Octafinalist – Public Forum

Jenny Li:  Quarterfinalist – OO

Jax Rounds and Alex Zhao:  Quarterfinalist – Public Forum

Jax Rounds:  Finalist – Congress

Alex Zhao:  Finalist – Congress

Victor Qin:  Partial doubles (top 24) – LD

Victor Qin:  Finalist – Congress

Caty Szeto and Victor Luo:  Double Octas – Public Forum

Angela Chen and Justin Chuang:  Double Octas – Public Forum

Angela Chen:  Quarterfinalist – Extemp

Justin Chuang:  Semifinalist – Extemp

Joey Kiang and Natalie Wang:  Quarterfinalist – Policy

Joey Kiang: Quarterfinalist – Extemp

N’Angela Chen and Nora Sharp:  Octafinalist – Public Forum

Audrey Lam:  Quarterfinalist – Extemp

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Mission accomplished, it was time to fly home:

Bye, Alabama. Thanks for the memories. See you in 4 years.

May is not only the month of spring flowers and Mother’s Day, it also represents the end of the regular season for competitive speech and debate.  Yes, May brought the last of the league tournaments, and a chance to close out an extremely successful year with a flourish.  As usual, our young warriors didn’t disappoint!

First up, was the 4th league speech tournament, held at Jefferson Middle School.

Caty competes in round.

Kudos fielded a very small squad for this meet, as most of our kids skipped this tournament to focus on preparation for nationals.

Here we see Kelly, Caty, and Jessica enjoying themselves at awards:

Kelly, Jessica, and Caty: a happy trio!

Despite our small team, Jessica Lin made sure Kudos didn’t go home empty handed, finishing prelims as the top seed, and ultimately taking the 6th place trophy in Sight Reading despite a very large  field.

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Next up was the exciting Spring Elementary Invitational at St. Rita’s school, an opportunity for our younger competitors to get in on the action.  This was the first elementary tournament to feature Public Forum debate, and our debaters acquitted themselves admirably, winning the top three spots, and suggesting a promising long term future for our middle school tournament squad.

Here we see Anjee (left) and Joshua (right) in round one at the St. Rita’s tournament.

Anjee and Joshua finished 2nd overall in the tournament.  It took a strong performance in the first round (pictured above and below) against another very talented duo in Miranda and Alvina to get them through to the end.

Miranda and Alvina battle against Anjee and Joshua in an epic round of elementary PF.

You can watch the entire round if you like, here:

Aff constructive – Anjee

Neg constructive – Miranda

Crossfire between Anjee and Miranda

Aff rebuttal – Joshua

Neg rebuttal – Alvina

Crossfire 2 + Aff and Neg Summary + Grand Cross

Aff and Neg final focus + judges critique

Kudos students also did a fantastic job in SPAR debate, capturing 5 of 6 awards in the event, and in impromptu speaking, where we also captured 5 of 6 trophies, including the championship!

From right to left, Eric Dong, Meghan Wong, Hannah Li, Eric Gao, and William Chang celebrate!

Our complete list of winners from the St. Rita’s Invitational follows:

Public Forum Debate:

Jacob and Thomas Chon – 1st place

Anjee Feng and Joshua Zhang – 2nd place

Courtney Chan and Aileen Wan – 3rd place

Impromptu Speaking:

William Chang – 1st place

Eric Gao – 2nd place (tied)

Hannah Li – 3rd place

Meghan Wong – 4th place

Eric Dong – 5th place

SPAR Debate:

Austin Wong – 2nd place

Emma Chen – 3rd place

Vicky Tong – 4th place

Rachel Ker – 5th place

Storytelling:

Eric Miao – 1st place

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The very last tournament of the regular season took place on May 25th, when the 4th league debate tournament was held at Chandler School in Pasadena.  We went in hoping to finish the year with another dominant performance, and our middle school debaters definitely did not disappoint.

Kudos debaters emerge victorious against tough opponents in the highly competitive SCJFL.

In Policy Debate, Kudos students took home all of the trophies, including top speaker:

Raymond, Victor, Benjamin, Jonathon, and Sally all show off their hardware. Eric Choi (not pictured) also trophied in this event.

We also had good success in Public Forum Debate.  Unfortunately, this tournament ran long and the final round of PF had to be cancelled, which meant that the final order had to be determined on speaker points.  Kudos had one of three undefeated teams left, at that point, but was relegated to third on points, despite not having lost a round.

Kudos teams take four of the eight trophy winning places in PF, and 3 of 6 speaker awards.

In Lincoln Douglass debate, our competitors did even better, taking 5 of the 6 trophies, including 1st place, and also claiming the top two speaker awards in the event.

Jerry wins LD at Chandler!

The complete list of winners from Chandler follows:

Policy Debate:

Jonathon Liu and Sally Kang – 1st place

Victor Luo and Benjamin Yeh – 2nd place

Raymond Cu and Eric Choi – 3rd place

Jonathon Liu – Top Speaker

Lincoln Douglass Debate:

Jerry Wang – 1st Place

Stanley Yu – 3rd place

Alex Zhao – 4th place

Audrey Lam – 5th place

Brian Chang – 6th place

Jerry Wang – Top Speaker

Stanley Yu – Second Speaker

Public Forum Debate:

Kirk Wu and Jax Rounds – 3rd place

Joseph Kiang and Natalie Wang – 4th place

Kelly Wong and Caty Szeto – 7th place

Cicily Deng and Mei Johnson – 8th place

Lauren Song – Second Speaker of 70

Caty Szeto – Fourth Speaker of 70

Joseph Kiang – Sixth Speaker of 70

The weekend of April 13th and 14th featured two tournaments:  The Glendale Middle School Invitational and the Brushke (High School) Invitational held at Cal State Fullerton.  The Glendale tournament is designed to be a warm-up for nationals, and draws schools from throughout the state.  Against this high level competition, our Kudos middle schoolers once again brought home plenty of hardware:

Kudos winners celebrate triumph.  From left to right: Benjamin, Victor, Alex, Jax, Kelly, Caty, Melinda, Mei, and Cicily.

Caty, along with her partner Kelly, broke to octafinals in PF, while Melinda did especially well, bringing home the championship in two different events:  HI and OO!

Caty and Melinda

It wasn’t all business though, as Stanley, Benjamin, and Victor share a happy moment before awards:

Left to right: Benjamin, Victor, and Stanley.

Here’s another picture of our happy warriors.

Complete winners list from Glendale:

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That same weekend, the rest of our team was busy doing battle at the high school tournament, the Brushke Invitational at Cal State Fullerton.  The majority of our middle school policy teams competed here at Fullerton, in order to face better competition.  They did not disappoint.  Jerry Wang and Kirk Wu teamed up to achieve 2nd place in the Open Division of Policy debate, losing in finals on a questionable 2-1 decision favoring their opponents.  It was an extremely sophisticated debate, and very entertaining to watch.  You can catch a couple of clips from the round here:

Jerry speaking in the final round of Policy.

Kirk speaking in the final round of Policy. 

Here we see Fred, Jerry, Sally, and Melinda,all winners.

Meanwhile, in Novice policy, our teams were busy dominating:

Kudos closes out novice policy after semifinals!

Because our policy teams did so well, those students weren’t able to compete in the individual events they had prepared.  IE rounds conflicted with policy out-rounds.  Nevertheless, we did manage to field two entries into the individual events, one of whom trophied.  Congratulations to Edison for taking 3rd place in novice Extemp!

Here’s another picture:

Complete winners list from Fullerton:

This March featured our third middle school league tournaments of the year.  Debate was held at Sierra Vista Prep in Orange County, on Saturday the 22nd.  The tournament offered Public Forum debate, Lincoln Douglas Debate, and Policy Debate.  Public forum saw a large field of 40 entries (80 speakers), and LD was quite well attended too, drawing almost 30 entries.  And while few teams entered policy, the level of the debate was quite high.

The Kudos squad in all events entered the tournament confident in both their abilities and level of preparation.  The results affirmed that confidence.

Here we see 6 of our 8 PF student winners.  From left to right, we have Nora and Raymond,  Caty and Victor, and Jack and Jenny.  The fifth and seventh place teams from other schools are also pictured here.

In Public Forum, Kudos achieved remarkable results, taking 6 of the 8 trophy winning spots:  1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 8th.  The complete list of Kudos PF winners follows:

Kudos teams take down the top four spots! Shown here, from left to right: Jerry and Joey, Alex and Jax, Kelly and Cicily, and Nora and Raymond.

In Lincoln Douglas debate, earned 3 of the 8 trophy winning spots, including 4th, 5th, and 6th place:

Audrey Lam

Victor, Stanley, and Audrey stand proudly with their hardware.

In Policy debate, Kudos teams took home all of the trophies, winning 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places:

Kirk, Natalie, Melinda, and Sally are all shown here celebrating their success in Policy debate.

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Later that week, our speech competitors traveled to Nicolas to participate in the league Early Spring 2013 speech tournament.

Here we see Jessica delivering an impromptu speech

We brought a fairly small team to this event, but our kids proved up to the challenge, as Kudos earned three trophies:

Jessica Lin – 3rd place – Impromptu Speaking

Joey Kiang – 2nd place – Impromptu Speaking

Melinda Guo – 2nd place – Humorous Interpretation

Melinda proudly holds her 2nd place trophy for HI.

Joey and Jessica are pleased by their success in impromptu.

Noble Kudos warriors!

2013 SCJFL Winter League Debate Tournament

The story of February begins with the first of two big league tournaments for our middle school teams.  On the 2nd, our students traveled to Ribet Academy to participate in Public Forum, Lincoln Douglas, and Policy in the SCJFL Winter League Tournament.  Our league is by all accounts the biggest and most competitive middle school debate league in the country, so we knew going in that we were in for a tough fight.  All told, 13 schools participated and 60 teams entered Public Forum, making that event particularly cutthroat.

Alex and Jax (left to right) win 1st place trophies in Public Forum.

Our kids were up for the challenge, as Kudos prevailed, taking home 1st, 4th, and 7th place in the event.

Additionally, we had 3 of the top 10 speakers in PF, including overall 1st speaker of 120 competitors!

Angela and Justin (left) round out our PF wins with a 7th place finish.

But it wasn’t just the PF’ers who did our school proud.  Kudos prevailed in policy debate as well, as our two entries took home the top two spots, earning 1st and 2nd place trophies.

Joey, Kirk, Melinda, and Natalie (left to right) make up the 1st and 2nd place teams in Policy.

We also had an excellent showing in LD, earning 3 of the 8 trophies in the event.

Three Kudos students are amongst the LD trophy winners: Audrey Lam, Jerry Wang, and Stanley Yu.

In the end, Kudos walked away with more awards than any other school, including the championship in two of the three events offered.

A complete list of our SCJFL Winter Debate Winners:

Alex Zhao and Jax Rounds – 1st Place – Public Forum Debate

Jenny Li and Jack Li – 4th Place – Public Forum Debate

Justin Chuang and Angela Chen – 7th Place – Public Forum Debate

Joseph Kiang and Kirk Wu – 1st place – Policy Debate

Natalie Wang and Melinda Wang – 2nd place – Policy Debate

Stanley Yu – 5th place – Lincoln Douglass Debate

Jerry Wang - 6th place – Lincoln Douglass Debate

Audrey Lam – 8th place – Lincoln Douglass Debate

Alex Zhao - 1st Speaker of 120 competitors in Public Forum

Jax Rounds - 4th Speaker of 120 competitors in Public Forum

Jenny Li - 8th Speaker of 120 competitors in Public Forum

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2013 SCJFL Winter League Speech Tournament

Less than a week after the league debate tournament, our hardworking warriors traveled to Glendale Community College to compete in the SCJFL Winter League Speech Tournament.  Originally scheduled to be hosted at St. Rita’s, the tournament moved to Glendale when a total of 13 schools and 169 entries registered in the 4 events offered and more room was needed.

Victor and Phoebe take advantage of one last chance to practice before the exciting final round.

Our school had just 7% of the entries but won 31% of the trophies, as 10 of our 12 competitors earned awards.

From left to right, we see Phoebe, Melinda, Jessica, Caty, Victor, Joseph, Audrey, Stanley, Jerry and Kirk celebrating their hard-earned awards. Behind, we see Mr. Strauss, who is much happier than he looks.

Prose:  Kudos fielded 3 of the 53 total entries in Prose – Phoebe Wang, Jessica Lin, and Victor Luo.  With only the top 8 places receiving trophies, we’d have to be at our best to compete in this event.

With the field cut down to the top 9 competitors, Phoebe delivers her speech in the all-important final round of Prose.

All three of our Prose entries excelled in the preliminary rounds, earning each of them a berth to Finals.  Victor earned 6th place, Jessica got 5th, and Phoebe won 1st place, Prose Champion.

Original Oratory:  OO proved to offer an even larger field than Prose.  With 60 total entries, our 5 competitors had plenty of competition.

Here we see Brandon in round, delivering his speech about highly sensitive people.

3 of our 5 entries ended battling through to Finals, with Jerry Wang, Stanley Yu, and Melinda Guo taking 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places respectively.

Stanley provides some sophisticated analysis in his speech about deindividuation.

Melinda’s hard work pays off again!

Extemp: Our four entries in Extemp weren’t about to let the Prose and OO kids claim all the glory.  Kirk Wu, Caty Szeto, Joseph Kiang, and Audrey Lam each battled through three preliminary rounds to advance to Finals, and earned 4th, 6th, 7th, and 5th place, respectively.

Caty earns a trophy in Extemp…

…and so does Kirk!

A complete list of our SCJFL Winter Debate Winners:

Phoebe Wang – Prose – 1st Place

Jessica Lin – Prose – 5th place

Victor Luo – Prose – 6th place

Jerry Wang – OO – 2nd place

Stanley Yu – OO – 3rd place

Melinda Guo – OO – 4th place

Kirk Wu – Extemp – 4th place

Audrey Lam – Extemp – 5th place

Caty Szeto – Extemp – 6th place

Joseph Kiang – Extemp – 7th place