MEET THE COACHES
Head Coach Matt Conrad
Matt Conrad is head coach of Regent Legacy Academy and served from 2021-2024 as the last head coach of La Reina High School and Middle School while teaching classes in speech & debate, history, logic & rhetoric, and ethics & technology. He is an alum of three of the best programs in the country – 11-time state champion Wheaton Warrenville South High School and College of DuPage (owners of the point total record at Phi Rho Pi nationals) outside Chicago, and the USC Trojan Debate Squad, which holds the longest continuous qualifying streak to the National Debate Tournament in the history of the activity.
As a competitor, Matt won over 100 awards in college speech and debate competition, finishing as third overall speaker out of 400 students at the Phi Rho Pi national tournament, winning a national championship in Impromptu Speaking and a state championship in Informative Speaking, while also qualifying to the National Parliamentary Debate Tournament of Excellence and serving as a national student representative for Southern California in the activity’s national governance.
As a coach, Matt had students at Polytechnic School in Pasadena qualify to the Tournament of Champions 5 years in a row (2014-2018) in Policy Debate, including the 2014 national runner-up and a 2017 quarterfinalist team, and at La Reina had state champions in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Original Oratory, and Original Prose & Poetry. La Reina was also named as a “Leading Chapter” by the National Speech & Debate Association while enrolling 15% of the school’s student body, with the online La Reina Invitational growing into one of the largest tournaments of the year on the West Coast, shipping trophies from Boston to Shanghai.
Matt’s last act before turning in his keys was to submit the Secretary of State paperwork to found Regent Legacy Academy, where students have continued to prosper in speech and debate competition even as families have struggled to find new homes in the region’s uneven educational landscape, and he worked to build out the business side of things. At the academy's first in-person practice, several girls broke down crying and hugged each other, which made it all worth it.
Outside of speech and debate competition, Matt is a USC film school graduate and published author currently under contract on his second book, a TEDx speaker coach, and is currently working on a documentary film with one of his USC classmates.
