LFA Public Speaking - A Banner Year

Our International Team for the International Independent Public Speaking Competition has been busy preparing both in the library and online for the 2025 IISPSC competition which will be held in Portland Oregon this October. Our team representing LFA this year will be Cate Shumka ‘27, Brianna Lam ‘27, Nicole Liu ’26 and Krupa Pramod’28. Cate has previously shone at Provincials, Nationals and Internationals (2024 in Bermuda). This year Krupa was chosen at Provincials to represent BC at Nationals where she made finals. Brianna competed in the International Resolved Debate and Public Speaking competition and was flown all the way to Toronto where she and her teammate took second place after competing in various rounds of quarter and semi-finals against top speakers from all over the world; she was mentored by Raine Gurton ’25 who previously also came in second in this international competition. Nicole won top place in the national Making Canada Stronger competition with her powerful speech on gender pay inequity. Nicole was mentored and coached by both Pauline Le Billon ’25 and Micaela Chan ‘26 who had previously placed in this Canada-wide competition.

Last October Cate, Sienna Loo ’25 and Oafe Cheung ’25 represented LFA in Bermuda. In 2023 IISPSC’s were cohosted by LFA and held at Crofton where Raine Gurton, Kristina Bedford ’25 and Samanta Po ’25 all competed tremendously. Now graduated, they’ve graciously devoted time from their summer to help mentor our new team who will travel to Portland with Ms. Duffy and Ms. Rabang to meet top speakers from around the world this fall and also enjoy some clam chowder.

2024 was a banner year in public speaking. In addition to the recognition mentioned above our Slam Team made finals at the Hullaballo Youth Slam Poetry Festival held in Vancouver in April. Samantha Po (team leader), Mary Leung ‘25, Nicole Liu and Sophia Tatone ’25 were recognized by poet judges to be one of the top four teams at the festival. Also, in April, Raine Gurton who last year made it all the way to finals at the Words public speaking in Australia, Kristina Bedford who made finals at Internationals in 2023 and Amelia King who made Poetry in Voice semi-finals, won top prize as a team in BC’s Poetry in Voice team Regionals. Congratulations also to Michaela Chan who was our bilingual PIV school champion and Siena Franks ‘29 our junior champion.

Congratulations to all our amazing speakers and a huge thanks to those who continue to mentor them from Ms. Duffy, Ms. Yeh and Ms. Rabang.