Claremont High School already has qualified 5 speech and debaters to compete in the upcoming state championship tournament in Culver City this April

They did this by taking center stage at last weekend's Student Congress Qualifying Tournament at Yucaipa High School by capturing 5 out of 7 available qualifying spots.

More than 75 students from the Citrus Belt Speech League competed in the daylong event. The Citrus Belt League includes schools from Damien High School to as far east as Yucaipa High School.

“They did very well,” said CHS Speech and Debate advisor David Chamberlain. “We took 5 out of the top 7 spots and that is pretty impressive. I'm very pleased.”

Junior Kelly Zvogbo had her best competition to date, winning top honors and being crowned the Citrus Belt League champion. Her teammates Laurel Wilkie (4^th place), Fritz Pielstick (5^th place), Daniel Merritt (6^th place) and Summer Dowd-Lukesh (7^th place) were the other 4 qualifiers. Sophomore Patrick Wilkie just missed qualifying by finishing 8^th overall.

The league champ was pleased by the CHS performances and appreciated how the judges analyzed each competitor. Kelly's cumulative score was a competition-best 30 points. 

“Overall I liked the tournament,” Kelly said. “The judges really cared about the intellectual component which was nice to see. Sometimes they base their scores more on other aspects.” 

According to Daniel, what the judges choose to pay attention to plays a key role in determining the final rankings.

“By the time you get to the final round, everyone who is competing is really good,” he said. “From there, it really depends on what kind of judges you have and what they really value.”

With 5 qualifiers guaranteed a place in the state championship tournament, the debate team will use the next 2 league qualifying tournaments in March to generate more competitors for the April event. If the CHS quintet qualifies for more events toward the tournament, they have the option of deferring events they have qualified for to other teammates.

Success isn't new to the CHS Speech and Debate program. The program has seen an incredible surge in the last few years highlighted by its unseating of Citrus Belt League nemesis Redlands in 2007. Claremont's league championship in 2007 ended 2 decades of dominance by Redlands.

Last year was an even stronger year for CHS as the debate team won its 2^nd consecutive league title and had strong performances on both the state and national levels. A secret to Claremont's success lies in the structure of the team. Though Mr. Chamberlain is the team's coach and advisor, it’s the students who provide the bulk of the leadership.

“We have meetings twice a week while some schools meet every day and it is a requirement,” Kelly explained. “We're more independent and it's not something we're coerced to do or that we're doing it for credit. The people who are on the team really enjoy it.”

One of the key components of the team's success lies within its freshman class. Fritz said the freshmen make up a significant portion of this year's roster and are already making an impact.

“We have really strong freshmen,” the CHS senior pointed out. “We have freshmen who are strong in speech, Student Congress, Lincoln-Douglas debate and policy debate. With the team we have, we can be competitive and qualify people for state in every event.”

Claremont's next pair of competitions will be the Stanford Tournament (February 6-9) and the Berkeley Tournament (February 13-16). Forty-eight students will participate at Stanford while 20 will compete at Berkeley.

“Those are some big competitions,” Fritz said.