Whoot! Whoot From South Carolina

Excellent, exciting news from South Carolina! We arrived for announcements this morning at 7:30 AM, just in time to hear breaks for debate. Last night, Kali broke to octa-finals in Lincoln-Douglas Value Debate, which means the 16 debaters with the highest win-loss record. This morning they began announcing breaks to debate quarter-finals. They announced Kali's name! She was in shock! Wow! She advanced to quarter-finals, which placed her in the top 8 based on win-loss records. Kali debated one of the big names in LD. One of the debaters we love and look up to. He is such an encourager to Kali, and to myself, and we respect his talent so much! She did a great job in the debate round, she has grown so much in her debate-ability! When they announced breaks to semi-finals, Kali did not advance. But the young man who beat her in the quarter-round continued on to place second at the qualifier! Kali and I are so happy for him!

At awards tonight, Kali came in 5th in LD based on win-loss totals for the tournament. (I think that is worded correctly.) What a huge accomplishment. Her goal for the year was to break in debate. Well,she definitely did that! Then they announced speaker points, based on their speaking skill as ranked by the judges. Kali came in 7th place in speaker points!! This was an awesome qualifier for her!

On to speech categories ... yesterday Kali advanced to semi-finals with her Irish dramatic interpretation. She and her duo partner also made it to semi-finals with their duo interpretation of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.This morning they also announced speech breaks and Kali advanced to the final round in both categories. At the awards program tonight we found out that Kali got 7th place with her Irish dramatic piece, and she and her partner got 6th place with their duo! Way to go, girls!

We had a great time at the South Carolina Qualifier! We had 225 competitors and I think I took at least one or two pictures of every single one of them - lol! My feet are in permanent-cramp-mode. You wouldn't believe the hills on this college campus :). Headed home tomorrow. I will proofread all these posts after I get home. Congrats to all the awesome speech and debaters that competed! Everyone did an outstandingly awesome job! And all the glory is God's!