After a year of hard work, rhetorical excellence, and tremendous success, Rice Speech and Debate closed out its year with one last tournament and the team banquet featuring its own internal awards. Results are listed below.
American Forensic Association National Speech Tournament, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, April 5-8
Rice qualified multiple events for this prestigious tournament. Kevin Barry reached Quarterfinals in Communication Analysis, making him one of the top 24 speakers in the nation in this challenging event. Congratulations, Kevin!
Jarvis Sam (’13) was awarded the 2024 NST Distinguished Alumni Award. This award recognizes significant presence or achievement in the arts or entertainment, achievements or contributions to the advancement of a field of study, significant writing as evidenced by media or awards, and significant achievement as a global citizen. Jarvis was the national champion in Communication Analysis in 2013. To read more about Jarvis’ amazing career so far see https://www.rainbowdisruption.com/about
Internal Team Awards
On April 23rd, the team celebrated the end of the year with internal awards at the annual banquet. Most of these awards have a long history and recognize various kinds of excellence over the course of the year. Below are this year’s winners.
- Lifetime Membership Award: Max Renteria
- Speaker of the Year-Speech: Kevin Barry
- Speaker of the Year-Debate: Max Renteria
- Most Improved Speech Competitor: Kevin Barry
- Most Improved Debater: Nikki Stancik
- Newcomer of the Year-Speech: Daijah Wilson
- Newcomer of the Year-Debate: Rohan Gupta
- Team Player-Speech: Chloe Pesqueira
- Team Player-Debate: Kyle Sanderfer
Dan Henning Award: Given in memory of Dan Henning, this award recognizes competitors who excel in both speech and debate. This year’s winner is Pranav Nagajothi.
J. Newton Rayzor Prize in Forensics
This is the second year of the J. Newton Rayzor Prize for Forensics, an endowed cash prize for recognizing demonstrated excellence and outstanding contributions to forensics at Rice. The award memorializes J. Newton Rayzor and his achievements in forensics during Rice’s formative years. One prize is awarded in Speech and one in Debate each year.
Manna Trevino is the winner in Debate for 2023-24. Manna started her collegiate debate career during the challenging era of virtual competition and quickly established herself as a very hard worker focused on growth as a competitor. Manna has become a very successful debater, regularly appearing in elimination rounds. She is known around the nation for her unique and intelligent approach to arguments, especially in scientific areas. Manna does all of this while also meeting the demanding workload of being a Biosciences major. Manna represents the best of what it means to be an academic competitor for Rice.
Maya Adhikari is the winner in Speech for 2023-24. Maya appears regularly in final rounds in multiple events, often bringing home the first-place award. She is known nationally for using her speech events as platforms for advocacy. Maya has served as a district representative to the National Speech Tournament as well, representing her fellow students at other schools with distinction. Majoring in Political Science and English, Maya’s investment in the relationship between language and power brings unique strengths to her rhetorical efforts.
Goodbye to A Senior
Like the rest of his class, Max Renteria started Rice with virtual classes, lockdown measures, and everything that went with the COVID-19 pandemic. Max had the additional challenge of learning to compete in debate at the collegiate level under these conditions. In fact, the first half of his career (two years) occurred in completely virtual conditions. He capped off this half by winning the NPDA national championship with Jacob Tate (’22). The second half of his career featured normal competition, with the challenges of travel and in-person competition. Max finished this period by again reaching the final round at NPDA with Arjun Surya (’26) and finishing second in the nation, making him one of only three Rice competitors and one of the very few people to have been in two final rounds of NPDA. Max Renteria is singular in the history of the team. We will miss him but look forward to his return to future events as an esteemed alumnus. Good Luck, Max!
Please join us in congratulating these academic competitors! This concludes competition for the year. The team will next compete in the Fall 2024 semester.
Rice Speech and Debate is housed in the School of Humanities and is coached by David Worth and Shannon LaBove. For more information, please visit humanities.rice.edu/speech-and-debate.