Meet the Sioux Falls students ranked among the nation’s best in speech, debate

More than 130,000 students in the U.S. compete in speech and debate in any given year.

About 6,000 make it to the National Speech and Debate Tournament. 

Each individual and team event at that tournament fields a few hundred competitors and produces one national champion.

But only one person is named National Student of the Year. 

This year, that student was Beneyam Hassen, a 2024 graduate of Jefferson High School in northwest Sioux Falls – a first for South Dakota.

What’s more, 2024 Washington High School grad Siyanne Redda spoke her way to the final round in informative speaking and placed sixth overall in a field of 256.

And the National Coach of the Year? Also a South Dakotan, Aberdeen Central’s Kerry Konda. 

Jefferson High School head debate coach Travis Dahle is proud of Hassen. He’s even prouder to see South Dakota once again holding its own on the national level in an activity whose lessons on communication and critical thinking continue to be valuable for students decades after they collect their diploma and leave debate behind. 

Travis Dahle and Beneyam Hassen

Last year, a Harrisburg High School student took fourth-place in Lincoln-Douglas debate, an individual event that applies values and logic to attack topics from both sides. It’s named for the famed debates on slavery between President Abraham Lincoln and a pro-slavery political rival, Sen. Stephen Douglas.

In 2021, as a coach at Washington, Dahle coached a Lincoln-Douglas debater to a second-place national finish.

“I think a lot of people underestimate how good we are,” Dahle said. “South Dakota has always been very strong in speech and debate.”

Jefferson debater: ‘Unreal’ recognition

Hassen earned his nomination for National Student of the Year through a vote of coaches in South Dakota and arrived at the 2024 tournament in Des Moines as a representative of the Rushmore District. The judges at the national and regional level consider not only a student’s record in forensics – the umbrella term for speech and debate – but also their overall character and commitment to their communities.

For Hassen, earning the top spot felt “unreal” but also like a recognition of and validation for all the work he’d done to build that winning resume.

“To be honored with something like that, with all the work that I’ve ever done in my life, it added a sense of accomplishment,” Hassen said. 

Hassen, who plans to attend Williams College in Massachusetts and pursue a career in law, came to the United States with his family at age 6 from a refugee camp near Ethiopia. He learned English more quickly than the older people in his family and became the go-to translator for medical, legal and school documents. 

His communication skills, bolstered in part by his role as someone who’d learned to help manage adult affairs at so young an age, served him well when he started debate. He did Lincoln-Douglas debate for a while before landing on a style called Public Forum as his primary event, and he has participated in individual speaking events. 

Outside the classroom and weekend debate rounds, Hassen took up community causes. He served in a role similar to a defense lawyer for teen court in Sioux Falls, a diversion program that sees juvenile justice incidents managed by young people under the direction of the local court system.

He and friends also founded a nonprofit called Know Your Rights Sioux Falls. For that venture, Hassen and others sought out homeless people in the city to help them fill out legal paperwork and other documents necessary for things like obtaining driver’s licenses or applying for apartments.

“We realized that this issue is not just us,” Hassen said of difficulties with filling out complex documents. “It’s not something that just us immigrants face, it’s also the homeless community within Sioux Falls, and it’s also others in your family.” 

He also has taken part in public forums between debate rounds, such as when he gave a speech called “The Expectation of Happiness” for a TEDx event in Sioux Falls.

Debate coaches have been key supporters for Hassen and his fellow competitors, Hassen said, and the support extends beyond pointers on speaking style.

“What they do has been pivotal,” he said. “There are a lot of times when we need advice, and we turn to them. Everything that we need has always been provided, whether it is through their own pockets or utilizing whatever.”

Washington speaker: ‘If they can do it, I can do it’

Siyanne Redda, the state’s highest finisher for informative speaking since the event became a national one in 2016, pointed to her coaches as an inspiration as well. Her “always supportive” parents and former debate students who’d performed well at the national level and excelled academically were also motivators for Redda, who will attend Harvard University and pursue a career in neurology starting this fall.

Two of her former Washington High School classmates also made the national tournament and wound up at Ivy League schools.

She set her sights on Harvard at a young age, and seeing the achievements of her classmates made her goals seem achievable.

“I was always looking up to them, like ‘If they can do it, I can do it,’” Redda said. 

This was the third year Redda qualified for nationals but her first on the stage for finals. Her speech, entitled “Detangling Black Hair History,” starts at around 35 minutes in a video of finals performances available online at vimeo.com.

“I always dreamed of being on that final stage at nationals,” said Redda, who competed in several speaking events throughout her high school career.

Redda’s parents, like Hassen’s, were born in Ethiopia. They moved to the U.S. in 1999, before Redda was born. 

Her informative speech leads with a story of her mother working meticulously to braid her hair into cornrows to make her “a pretty stylish kid,” then walked through the ways the legacy of slavery and the long tail of stereotypes that taught black women to shun their natural hair in favor of styles more acceptable to white society. Generations of Africans styled their hair with braids before being brought forcibly to the U.S., she told her audiences in Des Moines.

She cites statistics on hair discrimination in schools and workplaces and pointed to a situation at O’Gorman High School involving a student’s hair.

Redda’s experience as a child in a Midwestern city inspired the topic, she said. 

“I went to predominantly white schools,” she said. “I was one of the only black kids, and so it was a struggle I’ve had with myself. I used to always straighten my hair, and I didn’t understand the importance of curls or braids.”

That speech was just one of hundreds she has given throughout high school as a debater and speaker. Exploring topics and communicating aspects of those topics to others are valuable skills for anyone, she said, which is why she’d recommend forensics to other students.

She started out curious and found enough variety in style and substance to keep her engaged and learning all through high school.

“Communication is such a key tool that everyone will need,” she said. “Even if you’re just lightly thinking about it, try it out.”

Redda’s coach, Washington’s Michelle McIntyre, echoed Dahle on South Dakota’s talent level in speech and debate. Redda was just one of the local qualifiers this year, and each year sees a few make their way to the national tournament.

It’s something South Dakotans can count as a point of pride, McIntyre said, for individual competitors and the state’s student body as a whole.

“This is the largest academic competition in the nation,” she said before talking through a handful of current and previous competitors who’ve carried on a winning tradition.

“Siyanne really shined this year,” she said.

Editor’s Note: This story has been edited for accuracy involving the nature of how events unfolded at O’Gorman High School involving a student’s hair.