The speech and debate team here at YHS is in full swing! Students in all high school grades compete against each other in different drama categories and speech delivery categories to be the winner.
Some examples of different drama and speech delivery categories are Original Oratory, Dramatic Interpretation, Oral Interpretation Literature, and Extemporaneous Speaking. In Oral Interpretation Literature you do a dramatic reading of a prose piece and a poem. In Extemporaneous speaking you randomly select a question about either foreign or domestic politics, then get 30 minutes to research the topic, after you give a 7-minute memorized speech. These are just examples of speech categories but there are many debate categories. Over the past few years, there have been very few debaters from York High School but the team is always looking for more.
Besides competitions most weekends, practices for the speech and debate team are Monday nights and Fridays after school. Some categories require more practice than others. The next competition is the Nutcracker Sweeps, where the top finishers receive nutcrackers, this Saturday (Dec. 7th, 2024) at Poland High School.
In their last competition in Falmouth, Chloe Whitbread placed 1st and Yoshi Magocsi placed 3rd in Original Oratory. In Dramatic Interpretation, Sophie Scapicchio placed 2nd and in Extemporaneous Speaking Maren Robinson placed 2nd. Congratulations to these competitors!
The speech and debate team is one of the many highly regarded extracurriculars at York High School, and although they are a small team, they always are a strong competitor at the meets. Good luck to the team in Poland!
