Marshall earned 1175 points in the weeklong competition, while rival Irving tallied 775 points.

At Declamation March 6, Stockdale captured first place (and the Scoblionko Declamation Cup) for his rendition of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs. Irving's Ellis Mays '10 placed second for his presentation of Chuck Palahniuk's The Reality of Things, while Bays, who presented a selection from John Grisham's A Time to Kill, earned third place.

The judges selected Marshall's team of Stockdale, Bays, Rebecca Galey '09, Patrick Morgan '08, and Evan Pavloff '09 as the top Declamation squad.

Officially, the John Marshall Literary Society and the Washington Irving Literary Society face off for an entire week in everything from basketball to chess and swimming to ping-pong. (Each member of the Mercersburg student body is a member of one of the two societies.) The week culminates with Declamation, a "speaking contest" in which five representatives from each society are judged on their presentation of prepared monologues in front of the entire school.

Marshall captured the annual competition for the second consecutive year.

See the week in photos here.