Harker won first place at the 2016 Cal High School Speech and Debate Tournament, held this past weekend at UC Berkeley. The team won the Sweepstakes trophy, which measures the overall success of a team across all events, including speech, policy debate, Lincoln-Douglas debate, congressional debate and public forum debate. Harker teams prevailed over 243 schools from 26 states and four countries. Harker upper and middle school students participated.

“This award demonstrates the incredible breadth of our speech and debate program,” said Jenny Alme, speech and debate chair. “It took success on all fronts to win this prestigious award. From sixth through 12th grade, we had students excelling in all of the events.”

Over 100 Harker students participated in the 43rd annual invitational tournament.

“This is one of the largest tournaments in the nation,” said Karina Momary, director of middle school speech and debate. “It is also one of the most challenging tournaments our middle school students will attend all year. We had numerous students accomplish top finishes individually, however, the most impressive award is the first place in overall in speech and debate. This award is given to the top school at the entire tournament. This is a huge accomplishment for all of our students as is this is the first time Harker has won this award.”

Massive congratulations to all the participants and to their coaches! Go debate Eagles!