What WE LOOK FOR IN STUDENTS

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As with any academic or athletic competition, students are the face of Regent Legacy Academy. We’re looking for students who will represent us well and who will treat their opponents with respect, especially when things don’t go our way or when there's a vast disparity between the talent and experience level of two students competing against each other. Coaching students in speech and debate competition is a significant time investment, and we want kids who are going to be worth that investment.

Tournament days can be long and stressful, especially once state and national qualifiers roll around, and when qualifying bids to the Tournament of Champions are on the line. That’s when the ability to be calm under pressure, and to be relaxed and focused is a real asset. Students also need to support each other – and their friends on other teams – because when one student is having the tournament of their lives another student will be having their worst day ever.

A lot of speech and debate kids are used to being the smartest kid in their class. That’s great, until they meet other kids who are also the smartest in their class, and then the willingness to put in the work becomes the differentiator. Middle school and high school is when school becomes more about work than about raw intelligence and it’s a lesson that’s difficult for many kids to learn. We focus a lot on teaching kids grit and resilience because the narrow focus on academics and standardized testing in schools today has left many parents and administrators worried that their children are soft and unable to handle life’s ups and downs.

No one becomes a national champion in speech and debate competition overnight and like any other activity, the best make it look easy. There are levels of success in speech and debate competition, and that means learning and internalizing the basics before moving on to the next level. We work with students after every competition to discuss their judge feedback and figure out what went right and what went wrong, and what we need to work on to improve. Students learn the majority of what they’re going to learn before they ever win their first award, and from there it’s a process of fine tuning, as students develop their research, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills. This is also why we have our in-person practices – for all of the things we can’t do over a screen.

At its highest levels, speech and debate is a team sport. That means that when one group of students is preparing for elimination rounds, another group of students will need help to prepare. One student may be squaring off against an opponent that another teammate faced previously, in front of another judge that previously judged both of them at another tournament. That’s where the ability to work together, share evidence, and support each other allows students to win elimination rounds against good opponents, rather than merely breezing past unprepared opponents in preliminary rounds.