Needham Speech and Debate Declaims and Exclaims at 2026 Nationals

The ten person contingent Needham Speech and Debate Team rocketed higher than the artifacts in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC Memorial Day weekend, 2026. Junior Miles Yountz adapted to the judging pool in Dramatic Performance in his performance, scoring through seven rounds as eighth in the nation in the two hundred person field. In duo interpretation, the team of juniors Zoe Berg and Madeleine Clark ranked thirty-fourth. . Junior Sienna Tow read her way to the top fifty in oral interpretation and fellow junior Ayla-Ryann Thompson earned being in the top sixty-five oratory.

In debate, the policy team of junior Spencer Seiden and ninth grade Eli Borgos ranked thirty-ninth in the field while fellow ninth graders Sabine Richmond and Luke Yountz rounded out a superior team-wide performance in their first foray into policy debate. The team was also pleased to 're-unite cute' with former Rockets now Virginia residents Caroline and Katherine Calton x'26s who were part of the Needham nationals contingent in 2025 and demonstrated their continued achievement of excellence by ranking in the the top seventy,

Judges for Needham included parent Ginny Richmond and coaches Tyler Bates, Jackson Carr, Greg Cunningham, Matt Friosi, and PJ Wexler. Wexler noted this is the fifteenth consecutive year at least one Needham student has finished in the top twenty-five at nationals, and the tenth time in eleven years one or more has been similarly ranked in the top ten.

Graduating seniors Dan Golmohammadi, Alex Gurchenkov, Kalina Mihova, Lulu Wang and Matias Welch depart having achieved Academic All-American status,an accomplishment also recorded. by incoming seniors Berg and Clark. Clark, Golmohammadi, Gurchenkov, Wang, and Welch, along with with Yountz have earned the 'Degree of Outstanding Distinction' from the NSDA by earning over one thousand NSDA speech and debate points in their career.

The team is extremely grateful to all of its financial and parental supporters. The coaching staff is particularly enthused that all students shall be returning the fall 2026 to 'have fun, learn, and love and share their words.'