Forest Hills School Wins Best State Speech Team, Heads To Nationals

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — The debate team at the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in Forest Hills celebrated a win over the weekend, claiming victory in a state championship.

MELS Speech Team, coached by Adam King and Tara Manning, beat schools all over the state on Sunday after competing in several debate and speech rounds in the New York State Championship.

"The energy was just fantastic," King told Patch. "Some of the kids have been competing for four years and have never had an experience like this."

King said that, out of the more than 40 New York schools competing at the championship, only four were unscreened city public schools.

"Looking around, it was interesting for us to be one of the only unscreened public schools there," said King, who started the team 10 years ago. "It talks about the level of access that you need to have in an activity like this. We have to hustle to get a bus, get carpool, and get things paid for."

About a dozen students from the 39-person team are now headed to the national tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, scheduled to take place from May 27 to May 29. Speech rounds vary from poetry readings to monologues.

The Forest Hills team started a fundraising page to garner money for the trip to Kentucky.