This tournament was far bigger for Roosevelt than any of us imagined during our "down"return ride home. We all thought we had somehow failed losing those 4 quarter final rounds of Public Forum. I'm sure we will discover tomorrow that, on one hand, we let a State debate championship get away from us in that ugly moment. We just ran out of gas having competed hard for three days. But, as it turns out, we didn't fail as much as we thought:
1). We earned enough new degrees to assure that our program will next season remain ranked in the top 5% of all programs in the US!
2). The amazing performances in speech will always be remembered. State team Runner-Up in Speech!! Wow!!
3). As I write this bad things happened in Policy to Dowling, CR Wash, City High, and Indianola and as a result...debate sweeps are up for grabs. We will finish 2nd or 3rd. Valley appears to have it locked up. (Wouldn't we like those 2 QF rounds with Valley over again)?
Somethings we didn't know until now:
Catherine Chiodo was the TOP PFD speaker at State!
Taylor Yocom was 5th best LD speaker!
Mike Flannery was 5th best PFD speaker!
Turns out Roosevelt took more points out of Congress than anyone despite the awful luck for Nick and Tess. Congrats to our 3 finalists in Congress on a job well done.
Got to love Taylor Yocom and Harrison Hayward for earning us sweep points in LD!!!!! Only 4 schools could muster sweep points in LD: West, Valley, Ankeny and Roosevelt!!!!
We won't know the outcome of sweeps until about 2am but I suspect it will be the BEST overall finish for RHS at All Iowa Finals since 1983...you guys were terrific!!!!!!!!!!!
