Emory University is usually full of college students, but from Jan. 29 to Jan. 31 the campus was crowded with hundreds of professionally dressed high-schoolers for the annual Barkley Forum speech and debate tournament. Eleven Dreyfoos students traveled to Atlanta to compete in the tournament, and six of them received awards.

Communications juniors Jack Yan and Michael Wang were quarterfinalists in Extemporaneous Speaking, communications junior Jake Perl was a quarterfinalist in Original Oratory, and in Congressional Debate, communications sophomore Maya Levkovitz was a semifinalist, communications senior Taylor Rich was a finalist, and communications sophomore Alex Gordon placed fifth overall.

“[When I won the award] my reaction was ‘I can’t believe that just happened’ because I was hoping to reach the final round of the tournament, but placing fifth far exceeded my expectations,” Gordon said. “I didn’t think my performance in the final round was strong enough to get fifth, but a few of the judges thought otherwise and I got lucky.”

Gordon noticed immense improvement in his performance since last year’s Emory tournament, at which he did not advance out of the preliminary rounds. This year, Gordon advanced from preliminary rounds to semifinals, and then onto finals where he was awarded fifth place.

“I spent a lot of time preparing for the tournament, hours upon hours,” Gordon said. “I can’t give an exact number, but my prepping began a week before the tournament and went right up until the lunch before the second half of the final round.”

A lot of the students who competed, including Gordon, found this tournament to be more difficult than others. Many schools come to compete from all over the country.

“This tournament is definitely one of the most challenging ones throughout the year,” communications junior Jake Perl said. “There is a huge chance that you could be in the same room as a national champion at basically any given time, which is really exciting.”

Perl found that his biggest challenge was when he was competing against some of his good friends, while Gordon found balancing sleep and preparation to be the most challenging part of the tournament.

“My favorite part of the tournament was seeing my friends from other states and areas who I don’t normally get to see,” Gordon said. “Getting fifth was also pretty cool.”