Kudos’ High School Team visited Cal State Long Beach to compete at the 30th annual Jack Howe Memorial. For some students, this was their first tournament of the year, for some it was the first high school tournament ever. But with their adrenaline rushing and their attitudes brimming with positivity, Kudos turned out with a strong performance. Kudos sent seven students to the tournament, with six of them in congress.

Although he is on the Kudos high school congress team, freshman Ethan Li competed in Public Forum for the first time in his life. His school only had a certain amount of spots they could send in congress. Thus he entered in Public Forum so his long-time Kudos, and now high school teammate, Edwin Jiao, could enter congress. However, this was not a fruitless endeavor, as Ethan ended up with an being in the top 20% for speaker points and was awarded as the 6th best speaker in the category. He and his novice partner were one win away from a winning record, in what was a solid showing for Ethan in his first time ever doing the event.

On the congress side, the high school team continued to roll after their hot start to the season. Edwin got ranked on multiple ballots in his first ever high school competition. This included getting ranked in the top half by the parliamentarian, who ranks the competitors based on all three rounds combined rather than their performance in just one round. In order to advance to the elimination rounds, the student had to be in the top ⅓, as five students from each of the five, fifteen person chambers broke into the outrounds. Anne Liu was 7th in their chamber after earning multiple top five ranks Evelyn Lam was next out from breaking, as she was 6th in her chamber despite having a better cume than multiple people who broke from other chambers. Just to illuminate how much of a fluke it was that Evelyn didn’t break: not only was she ranked #1 by her parliamentarian. She was the only person in the tournament ranked 1st, 2nd, OR 3rd by their parliamentarian who didn’t break. So we know that Evelyn will dust herself off and come out swinging in her next tournament.

Kudos did have three students in outrounds, as Freshman Audrey Huang, plus Juniors Claire Wen, and Zach Chang broke in back to back tournaments Claire had the 8th best prelims rank, and was the only student in the top ten that was from Southern California. Audrey was next out from making finals, and was the highest placing freshman in the tournament. Zach and Claire finaled for the 2nd time in a row, both earning their second TOC bids. That means that Zach and Claire are already FULLY Qualified for the Tournament of Champions, a feat accomplished by just ten students across the country before October 1st. As of today, Kudos is one of only two programs in the country to have multiple students fully qualified to the TOC in Congress. GO KUDOS GO!!!

However the fun doesn’t end there, as Mr. Feldman was able to swing by CSULB on Saturday morning to lead warmups for the high school students before he went down to teach the Middle School Congress Irvine class. For some students, this was their first time ever meeting Mr. Feldman in person, despite having worked with Coach Evan for years. For all of the students that weren’t freshman, this was the first time they got to see Mr. Feldman since they were middle schoolers. In particular, 11th grader Zach Chang hadn’t seen Mr. Feldman since Stanford 2020 right before the pandemic, when he was in just the 7th grade. This was a beautiful reunion for Mr. Feldman and the high school students!

Mr. Feldman in person with the high school students for the first time since 2020