By Borislava Panayotova

Speech and Debate. Who has not heard of that wonderful club? One of the most important at our school. Its members are extremely dedicated and hard-working and those efforts always pay off. Connor Clark is no exception to the group. He has competed in many tournaments and has won many awards. His most important tournaments being the Harvard Invitational, Jackrabbit Jamboree, and the Phoenix Rotary 100 Speech Contest.

The Harvard Invitational is a huge and important competition. Connor competed in the Varsity Lincoln-Douglas Debate and managed to make it to the quarterfinals. While that may not seem like something huge, in such a large competition with a lot of people competing from out of state, it’s making a big dent in a very thick wall.

While the accomplishment is great, there was certainly trouble. Connor says that “because the style of debate is so wildly different from what I normally compete against it was hard to respond super effectively.” However, he is preparing to make a very strong comeback. “I am already starting to prepare for the new kinds of arguments and positions I saw at Harvard and am excited to improve on my technical debate skills so that I can break to elims [elimination] at Harvard next year.”

In the Jackrabbit Jamboree, Connor competed in two events: Varsity Lincoln-Douglas (LD) and Informative Speaking (Info). For LD, he made it to the quarterfinals and tied for fifth place. In Info, he made it to the finals and managed to land in fifth place. Something special about the tournament is that it allowed him to get his second bids for both the Tournament of Champions and National Individual Tournament of Champions. These national circuit tournaments only accept a few entries and are extremely difficult to get into, making Connor’s accomplishment even bigger! This allows him to compete in the TOC and NIETOC only as a sophomore, which is a very high achievement.

Connor, as mentioned above, competed in the Phoenix Rotary 100 Speech Contest. Now the Rotary is a bit different than LD and Info. It is more of a three-to-five-minute speech on a previously chosen topic. Competitors have a few days to prepare a speech on that topic. There is one preliminary (preparation) round and a final round. Connor broke out of preliminary and went to finals, winning 1st place in that competition. This Rotary win “will compel me to compete at Rotary again next year and hopefully keep doing well at highly competitive speech contests.”

All these tournaments allow him to continue building up his knowledge and his experience. As Connor continues competing and growing, I have a feeling that we will see much more wins and praises from him.