HARLINGEN — “Oh my God.”
Sally Navarro’s face was flushed, the phone pressed to her cheek, tears appearing in her eyes.
“Hold on, we have to stop!” said Navarro, fine arts specialist for the Harlingen school district.
Then, her eyes widening with amazement, she looked straight at Bianca Rios, 13, and shouted, “She made it to finals!”
It was Wednesday afternoon and students from Gutierrez, Vela and Coakley middle schools had delivered their performances in the National Speech and Debate Association Tournament. A total of 827 students from throughout the country competed in various categories.
Harlingen students didn’t get to go to Kentucky where it’s located — COVID restrictions and so forth — but they Zoomed in to deliver pieces in three categories: Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, and Duo Interpretation.
Bianca, Nicholas Allex and Alexa Trevino, all three of them students at Gutierrez Middle School for the Arts and Sciences, had just been talking about their performances. At that moment, Bianca was a semifinalist in Dramatic Interpretation for her performance of “Choosing Hope.”
Alexa, 13, had just performed a selection from “Spooky Dog and the Teen-age Gang Mysteries” for the Humorous Interpretation category. Nicholas, 12, also competed in Humorous Interpretation with his delivery of “Sesame: – Life on the Street”.
Nicholas, in describing his piece, preferred a more direct explanation.
“My humorous interpretation is about a murder on Sesame Street,” said Nicholas, who will be a seventh grader this year.
“Snuffalupagus has been killed,” Nicholas said. “He’s a character on Sesame Street. I’m playing all the characters in it, which consists of Elmo, the Detective, the Detective’s secretary Doris, Kermit the Frog who’s a news reporter. I also played Big Bird. I would play as Oscar, but we had to cut him because I didn’t have enough time.”
At this particular moment, Nicholas was a quarter finalist, which put him in the top 24 in the nation.
The same for Alexa. She explained her piece was a take on the Scooby Doo gang but “off brand”, and it told the story of their efforts to solve a case of a phantom lurking in the fair grounds.
“I’ve had this piece all year, it’s like my favorite piece,” she said. “I really love it. So for me to be able to make it to quarterfinals with this piece means a lot to me.”
She was speaking in ever increasing excitement about her success, saying, “It’s very exciting. And I’m very happy.”
It was at that moment that Navarro rushed in with her face on fire and declared Bianca’s victory as a finalist. She cheered wildly and Bianca’s face lit up and there was a liberation of the joy that had waited for release all day.
Then suddenly someone shouted, “They’ve all advanced!” And Nicholas began jumping up and down with clenched fists and Alexa was hugging tight her teachers and fellow students, now having moved into semifinals. This meant that Nicholas and Alexa were longer in the top 24, but had now arrived in the top 12 in the nation.
After several minutes of fine celebration, they managed to compose themselves to provide an update on their new success.
“I’m being a little overly dramatic,” said Alexa, “but I’m freaking out obviously. I’m nervous but I’m so happy that I made it this far.”
Nicholas said he felt really excited, “but also nervous because I’m top 12, so I’m nervous because it’s just going to get harder from there.”
Bianca was also excited and nervous.
“I’m super proud of myself and my whole team,” she said. “I hope the best is yet to come. I’m really excited and I’m going to do my best.”
All of these kids have been heavily impacted by the Uvalde massacre with it being so close to home. But as it often is in the face of such hideous occurrences, many have found a way to work it to their advantage. Bianca is one such individual.
Her Dramatic Interpretation “Choosing Hope” is written by a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary and tells the story of the massacre there ten years ago. Curiously, she chose the piece at the beginning of the school year, long before the monstrosity in Uvalde.
“It’s about a teacher in the classroom who’s trying to protect and save her students from the shooter,” Bianca said.
She’d spent the whole year refining her performance, but the insanity May 24 in Uvalde gave her a new perspective and focus for her work.
“It did change, a lot,” she said. Obviously so, considering she impressed judges so much she made top 6 in the nation as a finalist.
She’s not the only one.
Catalina Cabello-Corona, 13, also made top 6 in the nation for her Dramatic Interpretation about the mother of a mentally ill teenage boy.
“I really had to go into the script and really have to do a lot of research obviously on the type of mental illness my son has,” she said.
How did she prepare?
“I have to see a lot of mothers,” she said. “I talk to my Mom a lot about how she feels about her children and just a lot of rehearsals with Ms. Bender.”
Julia Bender is the theater director at Vela.
Catalina explained that in her piece, she (as the mother) is afraid her son might kill someone.
“I’ve done the piece the whole year but recently there was a shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde,” she said. “It’s very difficult to interpret the piece, especially with all that’s been happening.’
Also in Dramatic Interpretation, 14-year-old Devine Grace Galvan, an eighth grader at Coakley, made semifinals, placing her in the top 12 in the nation.
In Duo Interpretation, eighth grader Marlee Garza and seventh grader Azaria Castillo made it to finals, placing them in the top six in the nation.
