19 members of the Cary Academy Speech and Debate team traveled to Greensboro on Saturday December 10th to participate in the Guilford County Challenge hosted by Northwest Guilford High School. Addie Esposito was 2nd in her division of Junior Varsity Lincoln Douglas Debate, Cate Pitterle 5th, and Will Aarons 6th.

39 members of the Cary Academy Speech & Debate team, the most ever, traveled to Fairfax, Virginia over the weekend of December 2-4 to compete in the Patriot Games Classic hosted on the campus of George Mason University. Not only was this the largest contingent CA has ever sent to this tournament, it was also the most successful as the team finished 5th Place in overall sweepstakes out of 113 schools. It was balanced team effort with points being earned in a variety of different events. In Student Congress seven CA competiors advanced out of their prelim chambers into semifinals, tied for the most of any school. Jackson Stafford and Ben Lipson advanced to the final session of Congress placing 11th and 13th overall respectively. Georgia Dietz, Divya Vijayakumar, Jonathan Segal, RJ Jain, and Lexi Kleine were the other students to reach the semifinals. In speech events CA had students break in six different events. Divya Vijayakumar reached the finals of Extemporaneous Speaking, placing 6th overall; a first in school history. Three other students were semifinalists with Becca Segal advancing in Declamation, Grace Wissnik in Original Oratory, and Evan Ehrhardt in Poetry. Evan also reached the quarterfinals in Prose and Program of Oral Interpretation. Ava Autry and Madi Rockett were also quarterfinalists in Prose, Tommy Hugus reached the quarters in Oratory, and Jonathan Segal reached the quarterfinals in Extemp. In Public Forum debate, the teams of Alex Knott and Riya Thomas and Matthew Schaeffer and Arm Kassam both broke before losing in Triple Octafinals on split 2-1 decisions. In Lincoln Douglas Debate CA had four debaters reach the elimination rounds, tied for the most from any school. Grace Jin advanced to the final round where she earned CA's first championship in Lincoln Douglas Debate at the Patriot Games Classic after winning a split 3-2 decision. She was joined in the outrounds by Oonagh Stevans and Salma Said who reached Octafinals before losing, and Viraj Shah who dropped in Double Octafinals.