The Chesterton High School Debate team braved adversity as well as terrible weather to win their fourth consecutive State Championship.

The team scored 71 total points to take home the championship defeating rival West Lafayette High School by 30.5 points. This was Chesterton’s 21st State Championship.

The story of the day was in Policy Debate where the team scored 38 points in having four of the top five teams in the state.

Kalina Smith and Victoria Simms were the team’s top finisher in any event after they made it to final round before falling to the champions from Penn High School. Warren Fasone and Cassidy Peretin along with TJ Jaegar and Michael Anderson were Semifinalists. Jon Vincent and Justin Reed were quarterfinalists, putting them fifth overall for the tournament.

In Public Forum Debate, the team had two quarterfinalists in the teams of Katie Tymorek and Mary Kovach and Nikita Chawla and Summer Stockwell.

Freshmen Salman Lakhani and Taryn Trusty survived the preliminary rounds and made it all the way to the Octafinal round.

Lincoln-Douglas debate had two individuals advance to the elimination portion of the competition.

Jack McCrum advanced into the Quarterfinal round and Corinne O’Brien advanced to the Octafinals.

Congressional Debate proceeds slightly different from the rest of the events. Where the other three only advance 16 teams into the single elimination part of the tournament, Congress is divided into three stages. From the preliminary round, the top nine in five chambers advance to Semifinals and from there only the top six from three chambers advance to the final round.

Freshmen Corinne Leopold and Andrew Caratini qualified for the semifinal round. Robert Conrick and Eric Dreischerf qualified for the final round and received awards on stage; Conrick was ninth overall and Dreischerf was fourth overall in the state.

Humaria Khan also represented the congressional debate team as a presiding officer and was selected to preside over the semifinal round; earning her the title of Speaker of the House.

The team is coached jointly by Chris Lowery and Scott Woodhouse and they both felt that this was an exceptional end to a difficult year.

“This year was a bit of a rollercoaster where teams truly challenged us, but our kids worked hard all year long and had their best tournament when it mattered. This team will always be remembered for how much effort they put into being champions,” said Lowery. He went on to add extra thoughts about the teams’ senior class, “Corinne, Robert, Brandon, Mary, Katie, and Warren all brought different skill sets to the table, but did an incredible job mentoring an extremely young team. I’m proud that they were able to achieve the feat of winning a state championship in every year of their high school careers.”

The remaining state team members who represented Chesterton were Michael Leopold, Brandon Moore, Christian O’Brien, and Ronnie Kovach.

The team was accompanied by former graduates including Tim Young who has been helping with the team at virtually every single tournament as well as two other team members Brett Lara and Miranda Whah.

Besides this being their fourth straight title, the team has won a staggering 21 out of 24 titles in a row. West Lafayette were runners up, Penn came in third, Brebeuf Jesuit fourth, Munster fifth, and Valparaiso sixth.

Posted 2/7/2011