Members of the Los Alamos High School Hilltalkers Speech and Debate team. Courtesy/LAPS
LAPS News:
The Los Alamos High School Hilltalkers Speech and Debate team qualified eight students to compete at the National Speech and Debate Association National Tournament this June in Des Moines, Iowa.
Seventeen Hilltalkers competed at Albuquerque Academy March 22-23 in a variety of speech and debate events. A total of 200 students from 18 New Mexico high schools competed in the National Qualifying tournament in the hopes of earning a spot to represent New Mexico at the National tournament.
The following Hilltalkers earned qualifying status in their events: Uxue Sansinena in Lincoln Douglas Debate; Emily Xu in Humorous Interpretation; Lin Wolf in Program Oral Interpretation; Zoe Bent, Luke Favorite and Maximus Posada in Congressional Debate; and Carina Lanier and Minhtet Htoon in World Schools Debate.
Many Hilltalkers made it to the final rounds of their events although they did not qualify to compete at the National Tournament. Matthea Fung in Program Oral Interpretation and Dramatic Interpretation; Angel Meng in Humorous Interpretation; and Erin Brodnax and Anna Simakov in Lincoln Douglas Debate deserve recognition for their strong performances.
According to Hilltalkers Head Coach Margo Batha, “Our student Hilltalkers have been working hard to rebuild our program post Covid and their hard work is reflected in our outstanding results.”
At the final awards ceremony for the New Mexico District National Qualifying tournament, former Hilltalker and Los Alamos High School alumna, Jada Yuan, was honored with the New Mexico District Communicator of the Year award for her book, Unleashing Oppenheimer: Inside Christopher Nolan’s Atomic-Age Thriller. A style and culture reporter for the Washington Post, Yuan is the inaugural 52 Places Traveler for the New York Times, reporting on every destination in the paper’s annual “52 Places to Go” list during a single year. Before that, she spent over a decade as a contributing editor and culture feature writer for New York Magazine and its websites.
Although Yuan could not be at the awards ceremony in person, in her pre-recorded message to New Mexico students she emphasized the value of creating a “cogent argument” and that skills in speech and debate come in handy “when you least expect it”. The student members of the Los Alamos Hilltalkers are looking forward to meeting Yuan in person when she returns to visit Los Alamos.