Delta High School’s Speech and Debate team is knowledgeable about winning, as they have won State two years in a row. Unfortunately, in the 2024-2025 season, the team didn’t get the title to complete three years of straight winning, but they did win the district competition.
Danielle Lopez, DHS speech coach for the last 11 years, reflected on the past season: “There’s sometimes a special group of kids that comes through that, just everything comes together at once,” Lopez said. “I want to defend our district championship title.”
Freshman Madison Whitaker made herself stand out last year by gaining multiple points in competition: “I think last year went really well. I ended up with 400 points, which is unusual for a freshman to do,” Whitaker said.
So far this season, Whitaker has had a winning streak by beating other teams in competition with Michaela Brennan. Since her season went well last year, so are her hopes for this season. She hopes to “do better at State than I did last year, but mainly just seeking individual improvement on my ballots, speaker points, and placing higher at my own tournaments and extemp,” Whitaker said.
In hopes of a good season, Abraham Hickson has done multiple online tournaments and has already finished strong at a competition in Utah.
“I’m looking forward to making this a fantastic season, and it’s been going overall, just amazing,” Hickson said. He reflected on his last season and put some insight into how it was to rejoin speech and debate after quitting his freshman year.
“My last year, I would say, was a very impactful season for me, because it was a quick turnaround from having quit my freshman year and then coming back to do so my sophomore year and go to the national level and really succeed,” Hickson said. His own personal goals are to make it farther at Nationals.
After another sweepstake at Central Emma St. Clarie recounts how she thinks the rest of the speech season will go. “I think I’m going to be very successful this year and overall the whole speech team will be,” Clarie said.
