Debate earns multiple medals

Provided by LHS debate Twitter

Having spent months preparing for its competitions, the school’s debate team medaled in all categories in Melissa.

Debate season is underway with students on campus medaling in every category in the recent competition in Melissa.

“I think it shows the hard work and effort the advanced debate students put forth to this competition,” Porter said. “There are some students that won medals that have never won medals at this particular Melissa competition within the past three years so it was really rewarding for them. Mostly it shows how well they can achieve when they put their heart and minds into it.”

For senior Dena Assad, the competition in Melissa was the first debate competition that she has medaled in.

“I’ve been competing since my freshman year and i’ve never medaled until this competition,” Assad said. “I’ve learned that in order to [win] it doesn’t really matter what your case is about or what’s right or wrong. It kind of just appeals to the judge and have to learn what they want to see and what their bias is. Even though you’re not supposed to use bias, everyone uses bias. I finally came to my senses ‘ok if i want to medal, if I want to win, I have to do what they want me to do and not what I should do.’”

Receiving multiple medals in the first tournament of the year doesn’t mean the team is going to take it easy.

“They are back to the drawing table,” Porter said. “They are basing it off of little mistakes that they saw that they made with the previous competition, they’re going to build from that. Some of them like that negative affirmative cases were not strong enough so they are going to take it from there. Some of them feel like they should have had better database so whatever they felt like they were missing to just increase their winnings a little bit. That’s their starting point.”

Students are already preparing for the next competition in November. In particular, Assad is hoping to use her weaknesses as her strengths.

“To prepare for my next competition, I’m going through my cases one more time,” Assad said. “In the [Lincoln-Douglas Debate] we have something called values, which in essay terms it’s a thesis of our paper and we have to refer to it and I want to go and change it because when I was competing with my other opponents I saw the weaknesses in my value. In order to make it stronger, I have to change the whole entire value.”