Montgomery Academy Speech & Debate Chapter Earns National Recognition

Montgomery Academy's Speech & Debate team, led by coaches Jay Rye, Chris Colvin, and Evan Price, recently earned the 2021/2022 Leading Chapter Award in the Mockingbird District. This honor is the highest recognition a school can receive from the National Speech & Debate Association. Only the top school in accumulated members and degrees per district earns this designation each year. Out of more than 3,000 member schools nationwide, Montgomery Academy is one of only 109 to receive the Leading Chapter Award.

Once a school receives this honor, a minimum of five years must pass before that same school can be eligible again for the Leading Chapter Award. With this most recent honor, MA is one of only two schools in the nation to receive this designation for a 6th time in 30 years. Past awarded years were 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017.

Additionally, coach Jay Rye was also recently awarded the prestigious Sixth Diamond Award, reflecting a minimum of 30 years of coaching and representing an accumulation of at least 150,000 coaching points. Since the founding of the National Speech & Debate Association in 1925, Mr. Rye is only the 2nd coach from Alabama to attain the Sixth Diamond Award level and is one of only four coaches nationally to achieve this level of excellence in 2022.