Kudos College of Youth Leadership Obtained Record-Breaking “Triple-Crown” in Debate at SCJFL

On October 25^th, 2014, Kudos won a ground-breaking achievement at the Southern California Junior Forensics League debate for Middle School students.  It made the “Triple-Crown” sweepstake in all three debate categories: Public Forum, Lincoln-Douglas, and Policy debates.

In Kudos’ history of participating in the League’s debate tournament during the past five years, although garnering significant awards many times, it has never won Championships in all three debate categories.  Nor has the League seen this extent of achievement in its records.

Not only Kudos won the Championships in all three types of debate, but also had a long list of Speaker Awards, details of which are listed in the release that follows below.

The Kudos Speech and Debate team achieved fantastic success at National Junior Forensic League Nationals in Birmingham, Alabama, last year.  Many of those students moved on to continue their success in High School. This year Mr. Strauss, head coach, and Mr. Freeman, assistant coach, brought a smaller and younger group to the newly renamed National Speech and Debate Association Middle School Nationals, to Kansas.   The small size of the entries did not hinder the team from achieving a School of Excellence in Debate.  Out of 101 Middle School Teams, Kudos was one of only five to earn this distinction and this marks the third consecutive School of Excellence in Debate.

The competitors arrived in Overland Park, Kansas, a day early so they could work on updating their arguments because of changes in recent current events regarding the topic on Russia and Ukraine.  Kudos also brought in Mr. Christopher Loghry, who coached Emporia State University to the first and only dual national championship (CEDA and NDT) in the history of collegiate policy debate, so all the competitors could receive an equal amount of attention during the preparation.  They then had a hearty team dinner at Fiorella Jack’s Steak BBQ hosted by Kudos. The hard work and dedication paid off. In speech events, Catherine Szeto made it to Semifinals in Impromptu.  Kelly Wong and Jonathan Liu both advanced to Semifinals in Congressional Debate. 
Isaac Martinez, who was coached by Kudos Speech Coach Ralph Seymour at St. Rita School, finished in Sixth Place in Storytelling.

       Caty Szeto with brother Brandon

      Isaac Martinez

In Public Forum Debate, under the guidance of Mr. Strauss, Kudos team continued their sustained success from previous years.  The competition was fierce, with 99 teams in total (198 contestants) from best schools in the country. Mei Johnson and Michael Huang finished preliminary rounds as the 5-0 undefeated 4^th seed.  Kelly Wong and Cicily Deng were the 20^th seed.  Both teams advanced to doubles and Kelly Wong was honored as the 8^th overall speaker for individual performance in preliminary rounds, and Mei Johnson the 16^th.  Although the Ian Chen – Vincent Liu team participated in the Nationals for the first time, they ended with a shining 3-2 overall record.

Mei Johnson and Michael Huang

   Kelly Wong

Cicily Deng

Ian Chen

Vincent Liu

Kudos may have only sent 12 competitors to nationals, but 9 brought home trophies when they returned to Los Angeles on Saturday, June 21^st. Every single debate entry had a winning record, and they made it deep into elimination rounds.  Because of that, it is no surprise that they won School of Excellence in Debate for the third year in a row.  Out of that 12, only Cicily Deng, Catherine Szeto, and Jonathan Liu will be graduating, so the group will be even bigger next year when Kudos shoots for a fourth school of excellence award in 2015.While Kudos has achieved National Championships in both Public Forum and Policy Debate in past years, they never had a Lincoln-Douglas team advance to elimination rounds.  This year, Kudos brought two entries in Lincoln-Douglas and they both wound up making it far into elimination rounds.  Jonathan Liu led the way with a Quarterfinalist finish.  Justin Jiang made it to Octafinals and finished as the 8^th overall speaker in preliminary rounds, while Jonathan Liu garnered the 14^th speaker award.

Jonathan Liu

Justin Jiang

The leaves turn brown, the air turns chill, and pilgrims throw maize at people.  Yes, it’s the holiday season.  And November/December means the speech and debate season is in full swing.  On the 9th of November, the league held it’s first debate tournament of the year at La Reina school in Thousand Oaks.

SCJFL Fall Debate at La Reina:

Most of the squad had seen some action in one or more of the early season warmups, but for many others, this would be their first taste of live fire.  Unfortunately, as both Freeman and I were occupied running tab at this tournament, neither of us got a lot of pictures.  Fortunately, some parents filled in a few gaps for us.  Well, two and 2/3 gaps let’s say:  Vincent, Mei and Vincent, and that’s about two third’s of me in the background of the second picture.

Here Vincent sits, proudly displaying a well earned trophy.

Of course Vincent didn’t win that trophy all by himself; his partner Mei and he both played key roles in this impressive success.  Despite going up against older students with more competition round experience, Vincent and Mei were able to go undefeated and claim the 4th place hardware on speaker points.   This is a great result for a couple of 7th graders in arguably the toughest middle school league in the country.

Mei and Vincent win every round at La Reina.

However, while the photo documentation at La Reina may have been severely subpar, the results were not, as Kudos walked away with the top two spots in policy and had three trophy winning PF teams against a large, difficult field.

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Alhambra HS Invitational:

On November 23rd, many of our high school students competed in the Alhambra HS invitational for their home schools.  Lucky for those home schools, all that Kudos training really paid off.  Our LD’ers, in particular, are accomplishing remarkable things as freshman:

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St. Rita’s Elementary Invitational at La Salle:

The beginning of December brought our first Elementary Tournament, held this time at La Salle High School, with St. Rita’s and Kudos providing tab and background organization.

This tournament afforded our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders an opportunity to compete in one of 2 debate events, or 1 of 5 speech events, each modified to shorter time limits for the elementary level, but representing the same basic format as the events at the middle and high school level.  Events included: public forum debate, SPAR debate, Duo Interp, Storytelling, Poetry, Expository Speaking, and Impromptu Speaking.  This was our largest elementary tournament yet, drawing around 100 entries in all.

“Small child verbal ninja battle commence!”

Our littlest warriors proved quite might indeed, as Kudos brought home a lot of hardware.

In Public Forum debate, Kudos claimed the 4th, 2nd, and top spots:

Eric and Aileen hoist their first place trophies!

Left to Right:  Aileen, Emma, Eric, http://theessaymag.com/canada/ Ryan, Art (Poetry), Kyle, and William are all pictured here, representing most of Kudos’ PF squad. Christian and Audwin – 4th in PF – missed the group shot.

Our kids did a great job in speech events as well, winning several awards in Storytelling – including first place – and taking home awards in Poetry, Expository.

Connie, Annie, Stephanie, and Mandy pose with a proud Ms. O’Hara (she’s the second one from the left – the one who’s not an elementary school student).

And here are a couple of other nice group shots to make up for the lack of pictures from La Reina.

Los estudiantes de Irvine con su maestra.

TC and Walnut students are here too!

But SPAR was probably our best event, as Kudos students claimed all five trophies and the top 8 places overall:

Left to Right: Brandon, Justin, Aaron, AJ, and Mandy sweep SPAR!

And while we’re dishing out the pictures willy-nilly, here’s a nice solo picture of Mandy, standing triumphantly with her undefeated record in SPAR and her trophy to prove it.

I’m Mandy and I’m awesome!

Winners List for the St. Rita’s/La Salle Elementary Invitational:

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The Harker School Middle School Invitational in San Jose:

The next day, I boarded a plane with a smallish group of our middle schoolers to go compete at the Harker Middle School Invitational in San Jose.  It was freezing cold, btw.  Absolutely bone-chillingly cold the whole time we were there.  Seriously, like half of the stories on the local news were about how cold it was.  But I digress.

We arrived to nice accommodations at the Moorpark Hotel, just a couple of blocks from Harker, and settled in for a good night’s sleep in our respective rooms.

Morning brought battle for the kids, and after a hearty breakfast, they made their way to rounds.

Michelle, Mei, Cecil, Michael, and Caty are all pictured here. Note the warm jackets.

We brought two policy teams, three PF teams, plus Caty and Barbie doing IE’s, and we were going up some very large Northern California squads, so we knew going in that we were at a numerical disadvantage.   Additionally, Mei and Michael were victims of a tab mistake, in which a win was accidentally entered as a loss, and this mistake prevented them from advancing as they deserved.  Nevertheless, we still managed to come home with a good amount of awards.  And thanks to Caty’s mom, we even have pictures of a couple of them.

Caty celebrates with here family after breaking in all three speech events!

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SCJFL Winter Speech and Debate at GCC:

But we had one more fight to go before getting a little break in the onslaught of tournament action: the 2nd SCJFL Speech and Debate tournament of the year, held at Glendale Community College on December 14th.  This was a rather unusual tournament for us, as it combined both speech and debate onto a single day.  It also used a different public forum topic than Harker.  So we ended up putting our more experienced debaters in extemp, and trained the debaters who did not go to Harker on the December topic, immigration.

At the moment, it appears that I have literally no pictures from this tournament.  I will continue to look for some and add them if I can find them.

In the meantime, the results are in.  Once again, Kudos does quite well, breaking a team of 6th graders in PF, getting 3 breaks in LD, and winning policy, as well as achieving several awards in the individual events.