Two Newark High School Students Shine on National Speech and Debate Stage

Two Newark high school students placed in the top five of the 2024 National Speech & Debate Tournament , a competition that drew more than 6,700 students from 1,500 high school across the country.

In the “Prose” category , Amaya Wilson of North Star Academy's Washington Park High School ranked number two in the nation, while Malakai Yepes of University High School clinched fifth place.

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Wilson performed “Finding Me” based on excerpts of Viola Davis’ memoir of the same name. As a senior who started participating in speech as a freshman, she said the win was a culmination of hard work, dedication, and true enjoyment of participating on the team.

Wilson served as the club’s president during her junior and senior years and said she loves to mentor the team’s younger members.

For Yepes, this win wasn’t the culmination of many years of competing. He was a newcomer this year to speech, and only found himself on stage after his coach Saul Grullon was asking around the English department for recommendations.

After a handful of his teachers recommended him for the speech team, Yepes agreed to hear the coach out. Promises of opportunities for travel, scholarships, and personal development sold Yepes on the idea.

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Despite Yepes participation in other activities such as soccer, baseball, and the youth caucus for high school Democrats, he says he would give all of that up for speech now.

“I would say it's a home that I found for myself,” Yepes said.

Speech and debate tournaments are often held in schools, where participants go from classroom to classroom, performing their piece in front of their competitors and judges from the front of the room.

For Wilson, the National Speech and Debate Association National Championships in Iowa June 16-21 was her first time performing on a stage.

“I was so nervous because I wasn't sure I would be able to go up there and perform,” Wilson said. “I thought I was going to freeze, to be honest, but going up there, I got so comfortable and I knew, it's not about being up here and getting shy. It's about telling my story and telling the story that Viola wrote in her book that related so much to me.”

For Yepes, the experience was no less surreal.

“I was honestly really nervous about it,” Yepes sadi. “The microphone was cutting out a couple of times because of the movements that I was doing. But it was one of the most amazing performances I've ever done. Being on camera was such an honor.”

What made this win so special for Wilson was her deep connection to the piece. Wilson said her excerpt from Davis’ memoir shares the harrowing tale of the bullying and trauma that Davis endured as a child. For Wilson, unfortunately, the story was not unfamiliar. As an immigrant who moved to America from Guyana at the age of eight, Wilson was no stranger to bullying.

But Viola Davis’ story was not one of defeat, but of personal growth, healing, and self love, that Wilson also related to.

“Even just by the title, I was intrigued because I'm a person that values self, love and self growth, and I've always been trying to grow myself,” Wilson said.

Yepes also attributes his success in part to his personal connection to the piece. He performed “Chasing Home” by Elise Sharron, which focuses on a veteran suffering with PTSD. He dedicated the performance to an important veteran in his life, his cousin.
“I think finding that personal connection to your piece is what will bring you all the way to that final stage really, not even learning how to do your piece,” Yepes said. “You can learn how to do your piece perfectly, nothing wrong with it, but if you don't become your piece, I don't think that you'll really understand the struggle that the people who wrote these pieces went through.”

The enormity of the win did not sink in for Wilson until she landed back in Newark after the competition.

“I was like, I just got second place at the biggest national speech tournament in the entire world. And then I just started crying because I realized that all four years of this speech journey are over, and I was able to prove myself to myself, not even to my previous coaches or to my teammates,” she said.

Wilson plans to attend Howard University in the fall. At Howard, she anticipates joining the Speech and Debate team, or perhaps taking her performance skills back to the stage and joining the drama department. Her goal is to one day become defense attorney.

Yepes has another year of high school ahead of him, and he’s already thinking about next year’s competition.

For Wilson, the journey itself and the friends she made along the way are what will stick with her from this experience.

“Memories matter more than the trophies,” she said.

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