On March 8, 9 and 10, seven members of Speech and Debate headed off to the National Qualifier. The competition was held at Parkway West on Thursday and then at Pattonville on Friday and Saturday. Some of the events to compete in were Duo Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation and Humorous Interpretation. Lincoln-Douglas, public forum and policy debating were available as well.

“Brittany Steck and I did Duo Interpretation,” Sophie Gordon, sophomore, said. “Judges thought the piece we had before was not expressive enough, so we chose a skit that was dramatic and had a lot of feeling.”

To prepare for the tournament, members practiced after school and worked on their performance outside the walls of North. In addition to this, members also worked on their piece with their sponsors, Theresa Maher, and Whitney Harper.

“The National Qualifier is something we work towards to all season,” Harper said. “The students put in a ton of hours. It’s something that requires a lot of hard work.”

Overall, the team did well. The competition had seven rounds of speech and debate. Junior, Smitha Milli went on to round six for debate. Tyler Ludwig, sophomore, qualified for round three in debate. In addition to these accomplishments, junior, John Hallemeier went to national level for Humerous Interpretation.

“I think the team did really good because for the number of people we had, we got pretty far.” said Milli.