May 2024
Coach El's May Newsletter
Happy last month of school, everyone!
And happy Asian-American Pacific Islander and Jewish-American Heritage Month!
I hope everyone is looking forward to their summer. I’ll be spending a week in Iowa to compete at the national speech and debate tournament in June with 5 of our students. I’m looking forward to working at a debate camp in LA this July! Other than debate, I'm excited for family vacations, time with friends, and sleeping in.
Student Successes in April!
We attended the Tournament of Champions at the University of Kentucky in Lexington last month and took 5 students: Lucky Cantu, Lily Steinhauser, Audrey Millard, Luke Schooler, and Nate Watkins.
Nate Watkins advanced to the quarterfinals of Lincoln-Douglas debate, placing him in the top 8 at the tournament (and arguably in the nation!) for LD debate.
Booster Club Updates
Thank you to everyone who has joined us at our booster club meetings over the past few weeks!
We’ll have another booster club meeting on May 14th- keep checking your email for more details!We’ll be voting in new officers, discussing the budget, and celebrating an amazing year!
Showcase!
Showcase is upon us! Students need to be at Anderson by 5pm on Saturday, dressed in their debate attire.
We have 2 showcase rehearsals this week:
Thursday, May 2nd after school from 5-7pm. I’ll be ordering pizza for our students to keep their strength up for this rehearsal!
Saturday, May 4th from 10am-1pm. Please make sure your student is here by 9:50am so we can start right at 10am!! I am bringing donuts for breakfast.
One of our students had the idea to make a candy salad so if your child would like to participate, send them on Saturday morning with a bag of candy so we can make a sweet treat to fuel our rehearsal.
Candy Salad contains things like: gummy bears/worms, unwrapped starbursts, airheads, twizzler bites, etc, see this instagram reel for inspiration:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6DHXQpLS9t/?igsh=MTBoZDg0cm00MnR6bg==
If you’d like to support our snacking, feel free to venmo me (@ el_37) to get pizza and donuts this week, or let me know if you’d like to bring some treats for our team!
If you’d like to help with selling concessions at showcase or make donations to the concession stand, our boosters have a sign-up genius for volunteer opportunities here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4BAFAD2BA6FCCE9-48714963-2024#/
Debanquet
Please have your students RSVP yes/no to our 2nd annual speech and debate banquet, or debanquet! The RSVP form is on blend.
We’ll be having Maudie’s Tex Mex thanks to our lovely boosters! Thank you especially to our debanquet committee, Pam Wright, Cynthia Hamilton, and to Kristin Gossett for hosting us!!
Debanquet is Sunday, May 5th from 5-7pm at 9409 Prince Charles Dr.
This is a team-only event for us to give out superlatives, have one last team dinner all together, and hear speeches from our seniors.
Sign up to donate or help set up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4BAFAD2BA6FCCE9-48852305-2024#/
Summer Camp
Summer camp this year will be a little different than previous years! I’m super excited to announce we’ll be having a middle school camp immediately after our normal back-to-school camp!
Regular debate camp is Monday, August 5- Thursday, August 8, from 9am-2pm here at the LC Anderson library. Register here: https://forms.gle/qALSACALbgPk33VP7
Our middle school camp will be Friday, August 9th also here at Anderson library. This is open to incoming 6th-9th graders! Camp will be from 9am-4pm and costs $75.
The registration fee will include lunch for campers! Please share this registration link and flyer with anyone you know with an incoming 6th-9th grader. This is not limited to any one middle school and the more, the merrier! I'll share more information about this on Blend, the Anderson debate website, and our Anderson school site.
Middle school camp registration: https://forms.gle/F1sHg9MXxJVubXcy8
That's all from me for now! I hope to see you all at showcase this weekend. Our students have worked so hard on this script and I think it'll be our best year yet!
As always, please reach out if you have questions, comments, ideas, or concerns.
Take care!
Coach El