The CM Speech & Debate team is a juggernaut. If it were a sport, it would resemble our unstoppable hockey teams of the 1990s. Coming into this season, it had won six state titles in the last seven years, with only the 2019 team coming second… in a photo-finish. But there was pressure on the 51-member squad, the morning of April 6. Pressure to win another title, pressure to keep the streak alive, pressure on the talented senior members to motivate their junior charges, and pressure to go deep on the national stage in Chicago and Des Moines.
The Day Of
The Massachusetts Speech & Debate League (MSDL) State Final would be decided at CM with rivals from Shrewsbury, Milton, Lincoln-Sudbury, Newton, Bancroft, Needham, Chelmsford, and others flooding the corridors and foyers of Baker Street seeking quiet spaces to practice while keeping their nerves in check. This was the time of year when all performers would be on their game. There would be no stumbles, no long pauses, no loss in their train of thought. There would only be victory, and it would be by microscopic margins.
In a room in the Yawkey Center, seniors, Brendan Jolley, Samson Persson, and Owen Galvin went over their pieces, cracking a joke or two to keep things light. CM’s national champion, Patrick Blomberg ’24 practiced alone in the performance studio. And Sam Gonser ’24, who competes in the lesser-known category of Congress was also in a solitary state hunkered down in the Ideation Commons. Along with the remaining seniors Alex Pappas, James Linehan, and Chris Boensel much surrounding the success of the day would rest on their shoulders. For some, it meant competing in three categories which would require umpteen rounds and then finals if they were able to get that far. “There’s definitely a lot on the line,” said Samson Persson, one of seven captains in this year’s team before the competition. “Aside from a four-year win streak to keep alive; it’s also my senior year and I don’t want to be the captain that lets the team down.”
The Culture of Practice…
The secret to all this winning and the culture of winning are the hours committed to practice. During the four-month season, Speech and Debaters are in room B223 most days after school. B223 is the classroom with all the trophies… the official repository of CM’s years of dominance. It is also Br. Cavet’s teaching room and at 2:30 p.m. each day, he along with assistant coaches Ryan Julian ’18, Tony Kandalaft ’15, John Pietro, and John Murphy help the team reach the levels of perfection necessary to dominate. Speech & Debate is a co-curricular but at CM it’s run like a D1 program. The expertise in the room is unmatched, and as Blomberg, one of the captains of the team, notes it’s all about practice. “We’re here before school and we’re here after school, polishing our pieces. And that’s going to mean something when you’re standing on the stage holding a trophy. It won’t be the morning before the state tournament that you remember. It will be the nights that you stayed up late for months practicing – that’s what will be on your mind.”
For coach Julian, another powerful tool in the team’s arsenal is the army of former Speech & Debate alumni. “I think there’s upwards of 30 or more who have acted as coaches, or judged at our tournaments this year,” he says. “These are people who live in California who get on Zoom calls. These are people who are in the military, who are in grad school, in law school, undergrads who have incredibly busy lives, or just an adult working schedule, and they are coming back at nights and coaching our kids.” The pedigree alone from the people coaching these winning teams gives each member an unmatched edge as they walk in and compete.
Closed-door Combat…
Practice is one thing. Undertaken in familiar settings with familiar people. But let’s be clear, aside from duos, Speech & Debate is an individual activity. Once the door to the classroom closes, it’s you, your piece, the judges and the other competitors. Your number is called, and the clock begins. Depending on the category, depends on the time you have to perform. Depending on the category, depends on whether you freestyle based on a prompt or go in with something prepared. But as coach Kandalaft explains the one thing that changes in final rounds is that people are allowed to watch and that brings some unique pressure. “If you make it to the final round, there’s going to be way more people than you’re prepared for. And that could be something that throws you off,” he says. “The advice we tell our guys is ‘change nothing.’ You are where you’re supposed to be. And that’s because of what
you’ve been doing…so don’t change a thing. Everybody wants to be a hero and be more dramatic. But if you’re there, you’re there for a reason. Their only real competition is going to be themselves.”
Coming into finals, there were boys who had been winning or placing highly throughout the season. That would bring comfort. But those last two tournaments allowed for doubt to creep in. “It’s moments like these where you give your all…” says Blomberg. And “your all” is getting into that final round, or “breaking” as Speech and Debaters like to say. And to get meaningful points competitors need to break, and then significantly place. That’s helping the team. At the 2023 finals, CM received 291 points, the most ever scored at a MSDL final. Their closest rival, Shrewsbury, scored 241. And it was the Shrewsbury team who beat them the week leading up to these finals.
A Rollercoaster in The Ronnie
At 6:00 p.m., the counting was done, and scores had been tallied, and teams, coaches, judges, and parents poured into The Ronnie for what everyone had been waiting for since arriving at 8:00 a.m. that morning: the trophy ceremony.
Sitting under the banners in the gym, the team appeared in good spirits. Normally, team members have a good sense of how they’ve done based on Br. Cavet’s educated guess from how many boys broke and how well they think they’ve done. However, educated guesses have been known to fail. Categories were called and finalists moved towards the stage. First up, the debate categories. These, for the most part, are categories that CM doesn’t participate in, and so rivals will amass a lot of points early on. As the speech categories arrived, CM began with some mixed results…some fifth and sixth places had given the team pause from their usual rowdy celebrations. As Brother Cavet had said “We built a firewall at Poetry.” Poetry would be the category that if they fared well would play a major role in the overall outcome. That said, CM’s usual bread and butter event, Dramatic Performance, had no one in the final. Even Oral Interpretation hadn’t yielded what consistently was a sure win. Was the streak under threat? As Donovan Burke ‘26, one of CM’s trio of football players in the program climbed onto the stage that pressure had hit its zenith. As his name was called for a first-place victory, the team erupted in relief, filling the gym with burst of vocal energy. His victory opened the flood gates. Next, Duo Interpretation, another first place, and a second, third and fifth. Then, Play Reading, another first. Then Children’s Literature, a first, a second, a fourth and a fifth. Prose, a first, second, fourth, and sixth. The CM juggernaut had hit high gear, and everyone gathered knew that CM had finally come to life. For some of those on the team, their places on stage were signs of both the spirit of the team and how far they’d come. Take John Tobin ’27 who came to compete despite being out of school with pneumonia. He earned a fourth place in Children’s Literature. And there was Ansen Smith ’25, who was a novice and kept at it. In a season of not even making the finals or when he did, getting sixth, Smith stuck with it, earning second place in Prose.
As the team sweepstakes were announced, the CM team sat focused on the announcer, listening to the schools place in ascending order. But what about Shrewsbury? Had Br. Cavet’s calculations been right, or in all the confusion had the tally been off just enough to let their rivals take the day? As the pause for the second-place announcement held both teams in agony, the subsequent delivery of “Shrewsbury” announced that CM had extended their streak to seven wins in eight years. In the midst of the celebrations, seniors were letting it be known how much this team and this program had accomplished and personally done for them.
“I see a lot more guys in the practice rooms. I see a lot more newbies, qualifying for really impressive tournaments,” said Persson. “For example, Michael Holland. It was his first year and he was in finals for NSDA (National Speech & Debate Association), which I wasn’t even close to my first year. We’re seeing a lot of young success that’s going to be developing over the next few years at Catholic Memorial.”
For Coach Julian, the person who deserved the ultimate credit was undeniable. “What we’re experiencing now, this success over the past eight years, this is a life’s work of Br. Cavet.” And for Parker Kempf ’26 being steeped in what has come before him would be a driver to become what those seniors demonstrated in spades.
“It’s awesome to be a part of this dynasty. When I come back here in 25 years and look around the school, and I’m up there on the banners, that will be the reason I joined this as an underclassman. And in my senior year when I’m a captain, it will be my role to continue that dynasty.”
