27 members of the Cary Academy Speech and Debate team traveled to Durham Academy over the weekend of March 23rd and 24th to attempt to qualify to represent the Tarheel East District at the 2019 National Speech and Debate Tournament held in Dallas, Texas in June. After an intense two days of competition Cary Academy added 6 more national qualifiers to the three who already qualified at the District Congress tournament in February. Those students are:

• Viraj Shah, Lincoln Douglas Debate
• Cade Spector, United States Extemporaneous Speaking
• Becca Segal, International Extemporaneous Speaking
• Grace Wissink, Program of Oral Interpretation
• Will Aarons, World Schools Debate
• Eric Xing, World Schools Debate

​In addition several other students were first alternates to Nationals in their respective events. These include: Caroline Spancake (Original Oratory), Caroline Spancake and Ava Autry (Duo Interpretation), Nica Kostenko (Informative Speaking), and Han Zhang and Georgia Moorhead (Public Forum Debate). Based on the strength of these performances and several other students who placed in their respective events CA was second in overall sweepstakes, second in debate sweepstakes, and third in speech sweepstakes.  The full results of the tournament are listed below:
Viraj Shah-3rd Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Eric Xing-9th Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Han Zhang and Georgia Moorhead-4th Place, Public Forum Debate
Isaac Fan and Matthew Schaeffer-6th Place, Public Forum Debate
Cade Spector-1st Place, International Extemporaneous Speaking & 2nd Place, United States Extemporaneous Speaking
Becca Segal-3rd Place, International Extemporaneous Speaking & 3rd Place, United States Extemporaneous Speaking
Claudia Zimmerman-6th Place, International Extemporaneous Speaking & 6th Place, United States Extemporaneous Speaking
Caroline Spancake- 5th Place, Original Oratory
Elizabeth George-Semis, Original Oratory
Bayla Sheshadri-Semis, Original Oratory
Nica Kostenko-5th Place, Informative Speaking
Ava Autry and Caroline Spancake-4th Place, Duo Interpretation
Grace Wissink-1st Place, Program of Oral Interpretation
Ava Autry-5th Place, Program of Oral Interpretation

CA has now qualified for the National tournament for 19 consecutive years, the longest active streak in the Tarheel East District. CA also has a 19 year streak of having at least one Extemper qualify for Nationals, as well as seven year streak of qualifying in Lincoln Douglas Debate.
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50 members of the Cary Academy Speech and Debate team traveled to Fayetteville on Saturday March 9th to compete and judge in the Dogwood Speech and Debate League Novice Championship hosted by Cumberland International Early College on the campus of Reid Ross Classical School. For the first time ever CA was awarded overall sweepstakes for the novice championship tournament. Three CA students won titles at the tournament with Allie Chandler placing first in Lincoln Douglas Debate, Alex Lim Declamation, and JR Cobb Informative. This is the third straight year a CA student has won the championship in Lincoln Douglas Debate. The team also accomplished an impressive closeout of Lincoln Douglas Debate taking the top 7 spots and closing out the semifinal bracket completely. In addition CA closed out Declamation taking the top 3 spots, as well as taking four of the top five spots in Public Forum Debate including a closeout of one half of the semifinal bracket. The following individual students placements contributed to the teams victory:
Allie Chandler- 1st Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Brian Wei-2nd Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Simran Saini-3rd Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Oliver Wang-4th Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Marvin Koonce-5th Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Safiya Alvi-6th Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Emily Wang-7th Place, Lincoln Douglas Debate
Kelsey Welch & Allen He-2nd Place, Public Forum Debate
Andrew Lake & Alek Palakurthi-3rd Place, Public Forum Debate
Aryan Nair & Miles Ramee-4th Place, Public Forum Debate
Sarah Zhao & Abby Li-5th Place, Public Forum Debate
Alex Lim-1st Place, Declamation
Sydney Tai-2nd Place, Declamation
Katherine He-3rd Place, Declamation
Miles Lubas-5th Place, Declamation
Julia Young  & Gabby Matejowsky- 2nd Place, Duo Interpretation
Parker Courts-4th Place, Extemporaneous Speaking
Loren Troan-5th Place, Extemporaneous Speaking
Gabby Matejowsky-2nd Place, Impromptu Speaking
Julia Young-3rd Place, Impromptu Speaking
Sonia Shah-6th Place, Impromptu Speaking
JR Cobb-1st Place, Informative Speaking
Sydney Tai-2nd Place, Oral Interpretation
Kali Bate-3rd Place, Oral Interpretation
​Katie Grush-5th Place, Original Oratory