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The UCF Speech and Debate Team placed fifth overall in a national competition recently, landing them in the top 10% of schools participating in the 2022 National Pi Kappa Delta (PKD) Convention and Tournament.<\/p>\n
In addition to the overall top finish, the UCF debate team received the R. David Ray Outstanding Young Chapter award for schools new to PKD. UCF joined in 2017.<\/p>\n
Associate Instructor Jonathan Conway has built the UCF debate team over the past eight years and currently serves as director of forensics (the collective term for both speech and debate.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people involved in Pi Kappa Delta are truly unique,\u201d said Conway, who was elected at the March event to a two-year term as At-Large Representative. \u201cA lot of organizations claim to foster student education but then emphasize unhealthy competition between its members. Pi Kappa Delta is more of a celebration of speech and debate where everyone is encouraged to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said Conway: \u00a0\u201cYou will never feel like an outsider at PKD,\u201d said Conway. \u201cDebate is an incredibly high stress activity. We try to minimize that feeling for students as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following are the individual student winners in the competition:<\/p>\n
Debate Schools Sweepstakes \u2013 UCF received a Superior Rating: 4th<\/sup> place out of debate only schools<\/strong><\/p>\n Speech Schools Sweepstakes \u2013 UCF received an Excellent Rating: 13th<\/sup> place out of speech only schools<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>UCF was entered in the International Public Debate Divisions<\/strong><\/p>\n Open Varsity Division<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Sam Schepps – Excellent Rating<\/p>\n Junior Varsity Division \u2013 All UCF entries in this division received Superior Awards and placed as follows:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jessica Siles and Niamh Harrop – Co-National Champions [They both won their semi-final rounds and advanced to finals; declared co-national champions because they were from the same school \u2013 UCF!]<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n Mekaelia Morgan – Semifinalist<\/p>\n Madeline Magness – Quarterfinalist<\/p>\n Seth Nimbargi \u2013 Quarterfinalist<\/p>\n UCF was entered in 12 of the 20 Speech Events<\/strong><\/p>\n Extemp Speaking<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jessica Siles \u2013 Superior Rating<\/p>\n Jordyn Collis \u2013 Superior Rating<\/p>\n Persuasion<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jordyn Collis \u2013 Excellent Rating<\/p>\n Impromptu Speaking<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jessica Siles \u2013 Excellent Rating<\/p>\n Lexi Wajda \u2013 Excellent Rating<\/p>\n Niamh Harrop \u2013 Excellent Rating<\/p>\n Discussion <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jordyn Collis \u2013 Excellent Rating<\/p>\n Interviewing<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jordyn Collis \u2013 Excellent Rating<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The UCF Speech and Debate Team placed fifth overall in a national competition recently, landing them in the top 10% of schools participating in the 2022 National Pi Kappa Delta (PKD) Convention and Tournament. In addition to the overall top finish, the UCF debate team received the R. David Ray Outstanding Young Chapter award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":29286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[38,13,37,28],"tags":[1839,6110],"class_list":["post-29285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-news","category-communication","category-top-news","tag-jonathan-conway","tag-nicholson-school-of-communication-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\n