Hays Speech and Debate students made history this weekend at the Medina Valley UIL Tournament, advancing students to finals in every event and closing out finals in both Lincoln Douglas (LD) and CX debate to bring home first place sweepstakes.
Six Hays CX teams and four LD debaters reached the quarterfinals, setting a record in recent team history. Sophomore Kevin Cervenka, who entered quarterfinals as the top seed in LD debate ultimately secured first place, followed by sophomore, Vince Johnson. Tulsi Vaswani advanced to semifinals, earning her a third place finish. Junior, Dylan Cousins also broke to quarterfinals in LD debate.
In a CX Debate field of 33 teams from more than ten schools, 12 Hays debaters reached the quarterfinals.
After intense out-round competition, the teams of Drew Cook & Emma Cook and Holden Bukowsky & AJ Garcia closed out finals to earn second and first place respectively.
Emma and Drew were recognized as the overall first and second place speakers in the tournament.
Hays speech finished strong as well. Informative extemporaneous speaking saw three Hays students in finals.
Freshman Austin Wilson took first place, followed by Dylan Cousins in Second place and Maia Vollbrecht in fourth place. Persuasive speaking featured a fifth place finish by Ian Cameron and a sixth place finish by Brooke Mensing.
Merisa VanSchalkwyk placed third in Poetry Interpretation and Catherine Porfirio placed first in Prose Interpretation.
Hays speech and debate will be at the LaVernia UIL tournament next weekend prior to hosting a UIL Set A tournament at Hays High School on January 27th back-to-back with a TFA Tournament.
Hays will also attend the Lehman Speech and Debate at Lehman High on February 3rd. Community members who are interested in donating time or food items for the concession stand at the tournament can email the Hays Director of Speech and Debate, Gina Lozano, at gina.lozano@hayscisd.net.