The Freehold Township High School forensics team has enjoyed a great deal of success in the 2011-12 season. Most notably, under the direction of coach Philip Drummond, who teaches math at FTHS, four students from the 75-member forensics team have qualified to represent New Jersey at the National Forensic League tournament to be held in Indiana from June 10-17.
Anthony Camme, a senior, will compete in Original Oratory; Steven Perlamuter, a senior, will compete in Dramatic Interpretation; Mahaksh Kotdawal and Irving Nestor, both sophomores, will compete in Public Forum Debate.
The National Forensic League (NFL) is a nonprofit educational honor society established to encourage and motivate American high school and middle school students to participate in and become proficient in the forensic arts, which include debate, public speaking and interpretation.
According to Drummond, the FTHS students earned the honor of representing New Jersey after competing against students from throughout New Jersey at a tournament held in Summit on March 23-24.
Drummond explained, “In order to qualify, Anthony and Steven had to place among the top three in the state and Mahaksh and Irving had to be among the top four in the state. It is highly unusual for sophomores to make it that far, and they had to beat a national champion to make it.”
Anthony placed first in original oratory out of 30 students, and Steven placed second in Dramatic Interpretation out of 50 students. Mahaksh and Irving were in the top four in Public Forum Debate out of 50 competing teams.
The team also came in second place in speech and third place overall in the state.
Parent Patty Camme said, “The Freehold Township forensics team has consistently come out on top all season. Unlike the other top qualifying schools, Freehold Township does not have assistance from any other speech coach or professionals. They are an amazing group of driven, hard-working, focused students.”
While many of the schools that compete have teams of coaches to assist the students in competition, Drummond is the sole coach for the FTHS forensics team. Drummond has been coaching the team for seven years. He estimates that he has spent close to 500 hours this year working with the team members during practices, meetings and tournaments.
The team members meet from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. every Saturday from the end of October to the end of March. Students from any grade (9-12) can participate, but only 52 at a time can go to competition.
Categories in which the students compete include Original Oratory, which entails the student writing, memorizing and performing their own speech. Declamation involves the student taking a famous speech and delivering it in front of a group; poetry; extemporaneous speaking, in which they draw three topics from an envelope and select one to write about and memorize a speech about in 30 minutes, citing sources.
Other categories involve improvisational acting in addition to an impromptu speech, which has to be done with seven minutes of preparation time.
This past school year the FTHS forensics team has competed in 10 different speech events and three different debate events.
Forensics team students also participated in out-rounds at many national tournaments, including Princeton, Harvard and Yale. They were among the semifinalists in Junior Varsity Public Forum Debate at Harvard.
FTHS senior Morgan Thompson became a National Forensics League All-American.
In addition, this year FTHS hosted the largest tournament in the school’s history, which was attended by approximately 700 students, parents, judges and coaches from more than 20 schools.
Many former FTHS forensics team members have gone on to success, including actor Kalpen Suresh Modi, best known as Kal Penn. Penn played Dr. Lawrence Kutner on the television program “House” and portrayed Kumar Patel in the “Harold and Kumar” films. A plaque that Penn earned is displayed in the school’s entrance.
Drummond said, “It is very inspirational to watch the kids. I think about it a lot and I am excited that I got to be a part of this. The kids are wonderful and super talented and I feel proud to get to see them succeed like this.”