Holy Trinity’s speech and debate team is preparing to start up their 2025-2026 season. The students of this team have traveled all over America, competing. This past season, there were thirteen active members, and of these members, 29 tournaments were completed. All of this was accomplished with the help of speech and debate coach, Dr. Rick Ramnath, a Harvard graduate and speech and debate alumnus, who has led the team for eleven years. 

“We’ve had Academic All Americans, state champions, national tournament champions, and a slew of first-place winners in local, regional, state, and national tournaments,” Dr. Ramnath noted. But where do all these awards and skills come into play? Well, studies have proven that speech and debate students have better standardized testing scores, higher GPAs, and better college acceptances. Holy Trinity’s speech and debate team has helped send alumni to Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Duke, U Chicago, U Penn, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Georgetown, U Michigan, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Emory. All of these are top 25 colleges. 

Dr. Ramnath stated that he “would encourage every student at the school to join the team. The skills you will learn will help you for the rest of your lives, whether you have to give classroom presentations, give an opening statement in court, give a lecture at a medical conference, or simply give a toast at a Thanksgiving meal. The confidence you will gain in public speaking will shine through in everything you do.” 

Interested in joining speech and debate? Well you’re in luck. As of now, it’s not too late to join, and the team is looking for new members! So, if you like arguing, acting, or just want to improve your public speaking skills, reach out to Dr. Ramnath and stop by a meeting to see if speech and debate is for you.