<p>Last year, at the national qualifier which has been hosted at Stuyvesant for over 20 years, Stuy's Speech & Debate team attended its last live event. Since that day last March, everything has been virtual.<br/></p><p>Last week, online, our teams, (<b>Speech, Debate and Congress</b>) competed virtually for the right to represent our school and our league at the National tournament, which is being held in virtual Minneapolis. <b>We qualified a record number of students including:</b></p><p><b>4 Public Forum teams<br/>3 Congressional debaters<br/>3 Policy Debate teams<br/>a LD debater<br/>2 Orators<br/>a sophomore in Declamation<br/>2 Oral Interpretive students<br/>and 3 Duo teams. </b></p><p><b>Our Parliamentary team, which travels a different circuit, has just been ranked #1 in NY state and 7th in the nation.</b> They have done an amazing job competing virtually all over the country—last week they were at Berkeley!<br/></p><p>Veteran coach, Ms. Julie Sheinman shares, " I know some of these terms may be unfamiliar to you. And I am not sharing this with you to brag about the success of our team. I am proud of them, of course. If you could see them assembled on line at 8:00am warming up, feeling excited about the day, supporting each other with coaches, parents and alums on board to help, you would have seen a very affirming and heart-warming scene. Our kids are resilient, and they did something they love under the most difficult circumstances. They have worked together to keep going all year.<br/>This has been such a difficult year. I wanted to share with you what a great day yesterday was for Stuyvesant."<br/></p>
