Students from Harlingen High School and Harlingen High School South won big at the 2022 National Speech and Debate Tournament in Louisville, Kentucky. The event June 12 – 17 attracted 6,000 competitors. (Courtesy photo)
HARLINGEN — A couple of weeks ago, several extraordinary students put Gutierrez and Vela middle schools on the map.
Now another group of kids has done the same thing for Harlingen High School and Harlingen High School South.
Both campuses won big at the 2022 National Speech and Debate Tournament in Louisville, Kentucky. Students at both schools performed so well with their powerful pieces that both earned School of Excellence Awards. This is the first time in history that both high schools earned the School of Excellence Award at the same event.
“What this means is that we were in the top 20 overall schools in the speech category out of over 1,400 schools,” said Christopher Esparza, lead director of speech and theatre at Harlingen High School.
“That was as a team,” he said. “Individually, Harlingen High School had a duo team, a couple, that placed in the top six.”
The event June 12 – 17 attracted 6,000 competitors.
Harlingen High School South had a fine season, too, said John Reynolds, theater director and speech coach.
“We had eight students go to the tournament,” Reynolds said. “Every single entry broke to the top 30 in the nation. Each event had over 200 entries, so to make it to the top 30 is a huge accomplishment.”
CJ Heiskell, 16, and Adrianna Rodriguez, 15, spoke excitedly about their Duo Interpretation of “Glitter Baby” about a gay teen growing up in a small town.
“He asks the question, ‘Am I a mistake for being gay?’” said CJ. “So, the entire piece is just a reminder to anyone facing any sort of problem that you are not a mistake for being the person you are. That’s the core lesson in this piece.”
Adrianna said she felt blessed and grateful.
“I think our performance was best when we were on that final stage at nationals,” she said. “It was a huge sea of people. So I think us feeling out the audience and being able to communicate with them and share a story that is so dear to us, it was so important to us and our growth.”
Reynolds said the students ranked high for their performance because they put a great deal of passion into a story about the timely issue of LGBT rights.
Many of the students took on heavy material about serious and mature subjects. Charlotte Hughes, 16, a senior at HHS, and her partner Benjamin Trevino performed a piece called “Promising Young Woman.”
“It’s a really heavy topic about sexual assault and learning to forgive and holding people accountable for their actions,” Charlotte said. “We placed third in the nation.”
Carolina Kortan, 14, and her partner Audrey Nguyen, also did a heavy piece for Duo Interpretation and placed 14th in the nation.
“In this piece I play a preschool teacher and one of my students is missing,” said Carolina, who will be a sophomore at the Harlingen School of Health Professions this school year.
“My student is played by my partner Audrey Nguyen and there’s this whole investigation about this missing child,” Carolina said. “At the end we find out that the teacher actually kidnapped the child, so it’s a little bit of a dark piece.”
But the two managed to deliver a compelling performance.
“It’s incredible,” Carolina said. “Going in, I had confidence in myself and my partner, but I think we exceeded our expectations about how well we thought we were going to do.”
