Helen Liang ‘25 has pushed her way into the field of speech competition and is on a very successful winning streak.
Starting in her freshman year, Liang became interested in speech through the initial speech recruitment meeting. Accompanied by a friend, she saw former speech captains putting on a rendition of Star Wars in the MCR, which immediately caught her attention.
“I honestly thought it was really cool with the way they presented themselves and how they performed,” Liang said. “It made me really want to join the speech team.”
In her freshman year, Liang competed in the duo event, starting to compete locally with her initial spark. Entering her sophomore year, Liang joined the oral interpretation event. In this event, her skills truly began to flourish as she won numerous competitions. The end of her sophomore season came with progressing to one of two nationals at the National Catholic Forensic League, or NCFL.
Despite not placing at the national level, Liang continued to pursue speech, starting her junior year off with a different category: program oral interpretation. Her program consisted of two distinct pieces that placed her in the Top 4 at the William Tent Invitational, New York City Invitational and Princeton University Classic.
Her favorite piece involved the treatment of Asian women in nail salons.
“I really liked this piece because the whole point of these nail salons is so that Asian women can create these communities where they can create financial autonomy, but there’s still so much racism and harassment in these spaces,” Liang said. “My mom has friends who own nail salons and I know many of their kids. It gives me a real personal connection to my piece.”
Her thoughtfully written pieces along with her astounding performances have gained her the confidence to pursue even more competitions.
“I feel like I really learned a lot from my time in speech competitions. They helped me to be more confident in myself, and I can talk a lot better without using so many filler words,” Liang said.
With these wins on her back, Liang is looking forward to her upcoming competitions. Her goal this year is to compete at the National Speech and Debate Association, the more prestigious of the two major national speech competitions.
With qualifiers right around the corner in March, Liang is excited to compete and fight her way to the top despite the vast amount of competition.
“I do want to win,” Liang said. “I worked really hard for it the past three years, and I really think I’ll bring it this year.”