Iverson’s Talent is No Lai

Iversons+Talent+is+No+Lai

Eva, Staff Writer

After placing third in the Southern California Debate League Qualifiers, senior Iverson Lai is headed to State Championships in April.

The event was held at California State University of Long Beach on March 3rd. The event is a non-stop all day event that is split into three rounds, a semi-final round, and a final round. During the tournament, competitors are split into classrooms with six others and perform their speeches in front of a judge. After performing, judges give a score ranging from 1 to 5, with 1 being the highest score.

Lai participated in the event known as Humorous Interpretation. After not quite being able to qualify for State Championships in the years prior, he says it felt “good” to finally be able to place.

“I felt pretty good but I hid it a lot at the tournament cause I didn’t want to get let down or something, so I was just kind of stone faced the whole time. I was like ‘hmph.’ But then when I got it, on the inside, I was still like ‘hmph,’ but on the outside I was freaking out.” says Lai.

Besides being an honor student, Lai was able to practice for hours everyday after school in preparation for this tournament. This weekend, he is headed to another tournament, the National Qualifiers (not related to State Qualifiers).

Iverson has been in the Speech and Debate program for his entire high school career. He believes being in the club has helped him socially.

“I think it’s made me a lot more outgoing. I’d say before that I was a little reserved, but now I think I feel comfortable talking to people and feel comfortable with just making new friends.”

When asked what he would miss most, he shared, “What [I’ll] miss most is how social it is, because there’s not a lot of things in high school where you can just meet up with twenty other schools and talk to different people and stuff like that. I might do [Speech and Debate] in college, but I don’t know because I really want to do something new in college.”