While majority of students spent their Saturday morning and afternoon preparing for Homecoming, Rocklin High’s Speech and Debate clashed with other schools from the district.

Arriving at seven a.m., these students spent the entire day in the cafeteria and various classrooms, presenting memorized interp speeches to on-the-spot impromptu. The only categories that Rocklin did not compete in was national and international extemporaneous.

“Well, [the other schools] sometimes got lost [around the campus], but they mostly found places to talk to their friends,” Andy Nguyen said. He was one of the volunteers from Mock Trial that stayed from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 in the afternoon.

After all of the contestants gave their speeches to the parent judges a first time, a select group of finalists were called back to give their speeches again. Starting around six in evening, awards were handed out to the finalists in each category. Among the team, 13 trophies were handed out to Rocklin High students.

For first-time Speech and Debater, senior Taylor Harman Green won first place in her category of novice expository speech. In this speech, the presenter chooses a topic to enlighten the audience on, in Taylor’s case:  violins.

Although there were only seven competitors in expos, the most competition was in the impromptu category. With 41 speeches in the novice impromptu and 32 for varsity, both freshman Ashley Hay and senior captain Prithvi Rajasekaran placed in the top eight.

“Both rounds were horrible and painful,” Ashley said. For her two rounds of impromptu, she chose “fire versus ice” and “hurricanes.” Ashley also competed in Original Oratory, where she placed fourth.

Although Saturday was a regular league tournament to the Speech and Debate team, the Homecoming hype did not result in a major loss to the competitors. For some, in particular, Ashley Hay, Ashton Aspley and Steven Carin, the end of the tournament meant hustling over to the dance which started at 8 pm.

“Some friends wanted me to go and I thought ‘How bad could it be?’” Ashley said. To make sure she got to Homecoming on time, she had to leave about an hour early.

As for Ashton’s case, “I was falling down at 11:30,” he said.