Our El Camino entrants to the state championship: Emily, Marlon, Teddy, Gabriel, and Shawn. (Hilda is not pictured.)

Teddy and Marlon both earned awards in Student Congress for making it to the Semi-Finalist round.

After the completion of the Tri-County Forensic League Qualifiers in March 2015, the El Camino team earned a total of 11 bids to the state championship. They were as follows:

Emily Mercer

• Parliamentary Debate
• Original Advocacy
• Duo Interpretation

Shawn Haq

• Parliamentary Debate
• National Extemporaneous
• International Extemporaneous

Marlon Poroj

• Student Congress (Congressional Debate)
• Duo Interpretation

Teddy Yerxa

• Student Congress (Congressional Debate)

Hilda Velásquez-Galvez

• Dramatic Interpretation

Gabriel Salazar

• National Extemporaneous

Note: As a result of scheduling issues, Marlon had to choose between Student Congress and Duo Interpretation. Whereas Student Congress has always been his favorite competition area, he chose that. Thus, he and Emily did not end up competing at the state competition in that area.

Results:
Student Congress: Teddy and Marlon had a very decent level of success, advancing past the Preliminary Rounds and into the Semi-Finals. They were not able to advance to the Finals round, but they had a great go of it. Teddy was our top finisher with a ranking of 7 in the Semi-Finals, and narrowly missing a trip to the Final round. Marlon had a 12th place ranking in his chamber.

Parliamentary Debate: Emily and Shawn were able to start out with a victory, but then lost to two strong teams that ended up advancing to the Preliminary knock-out round, just prior to the Finals round.

Original Advocacy: Emily had a rough start to the competition, coming in 7th in her first round. However, she quickly and consistently improved by finishing 4th in the next round and 3rd in her last round. If her first round was similar to the last two, she would have likely advanced.

Dramatic Interpretation: At first glance, Hilda’s rankings of 5-6-5 in her rounds don’t look great. However, in each of her rounds one of her three judges were quite impressed. In the first round, one judge gave her a #3 ranking, in the second round a judge gave her a #2 ranking, and in the last round a judge awarded her position #3.

National Extemporaneous: Gabriel was also ranked 5-6-5 in his rounds, but was able to secure a #3 ranking from one of his judges in the second round. Not bad for a guy who was a rookie and relatively new to the event.