by Andrew Alonzo | aalonzo@claremont-courier.com

On the heels of winning its 10th consecutive Citrus Belt Speech Region league title earlier this year, Claremont High School speech and debate coach David Chamberlain took a team of 19 students to compete in the June 15-20 National Speech and Debate Association’s national championship tournament in Des Moines.

“This is the biggest squad ever that we’re taking to nationals,” Chamberlain said prior to the competition.

(L-R) Claremont High Speech and Debate Team member Reyhan Garcia and coach David Chamberlain. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

The team tested their skills on the national stage against some of the strongest opposition in the country — and in some cases, the world. Here are the results:

Seniors:

• Lincoln Roston, fifth place, Lincoln-Douglas debate.
• Isabelle Shie, 22^nd, informative speaking.
• Theo Krebs, eliminated in the seventh round in world schools debate; fourth round exit in extemporaneous debate.
• Aubrey Walburg, sixth round exit in dramatic interpretation; third round exit in prose.
• Serenity Hamilton, round three exit in original spoken word poetry; sixth round elimination in humorous interpretation.
• Lucas Grannis, third round exit in extemporaneous speaking; eighth round exit in original oratory.

Juniors

• Pablo Guevara, second place, congressional senate preliminary round; ninth in elimination round.
• Fiona Wu and Kate Song, 10^th round exit in the public forum debate.
• Nina Wu, ninth round elimination, Lincoln-Douglas debate.
• Emma DeWees, sixth round exit, dramatic interpretation.
• Max Abbott and Caroline Warren, fourth round exit, extemporaneous debate; sixth round elimination, big questions debate.
• Rukmini Sridharan, fourth round elimination in original spoken word poetry.
• Kaitlyn Zhang, round three exit in original spoken word poetry.

Sophomores

• Reyhan Garcia, 11^th place, congressional house preliminary round; round five exit in impromptu speaking.
• Annabelle Brusky, sixth round exit, humorous interpretation; third round elimination, original spoken word poetry.
• Iris Chiou, round three exit, expository speaking; round six elimination, informative speaking.
• and Henry Phillips, round three exit in extemporaneous speaking; seventh round elimination in world schools debate.

Full results are at speechanddebate.org/national-tournament-2025.

(L-R) Claremont High Speech and Debate Team coach David Chamberlain and team members Caroline Warren, Nina Wu, Fiona Wu, Kaitlyn Zhang, Reyhan Garcia and Henry Phillips. Not pictured: Lincoln Roston, Isabelle Shie, Aubrey Walburg, Theo Krebs, Serenity Hamilton, Lucas Grannis, Pablo Guevara, Rukmini Sridharan, Max Abbott, Emma DeWees, Annabelle Brusky and Iris Chiou. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

This year’s national tournament was the third for rising CHS senior and Courier social media manager Kate Song. This year, she and debate partner Fiona Wu achieved their long-time goal of “breaking” at nationals, a milestone they’ve been striving to hit since 2023.

“‘Break’ is a term we used to say advance to an elimination round,” Kate said, “so I guess, finally after three years of going and not breaking, we finally achieved our goal. That was a really surreal moment, and we were really proud of ourselves, because all the all-nighters paid off and all the Celsius drinks and then not eating lunch and dinner paid off.”

Kate hopes the team’s success brings attention to speech and debate.

“I feel like sometimes people overlook the performance of speech and debate kids,” Kate said. “People are often more focused on … stuff like the football and cheerleading. But, I think people should acknowledge and put a little bit more respect toward the work and the performance that we commit to as part of the speech and debate team.”

This year was the 100-year anniversary of the National Speech and Debate Association and Claremont’s 28th appearance in the national tournament.

“The qualifying process for the national tournament is through the Southern California district qualifying tournaments,” Chamberlain said. “That Southern California district is this eastern part of LA, it’s all of San Bernardino, it’s Riverside, it’s Orange County and San Diego, so it’s a huge area, and just the top three or two [students] will qualify.”

Claremont competes in the Citrus Belt Speech Region, which hosted 14 tournaments in the 2024-25 school year. Schools in the region also send students to compete at the California High School Speech Association State Championship. Results — including Isabelle Shie’s first place finish in informative speaking — are at tabroom.com.