After almost a month of preparation, the work of the Redhawk debate team culminates this Saturday as they leave The Nest for their first debate competition at Princeton High School.
“I am mostly excited for the debaters to be able to challenge others and be challenged,” debate teacher Michelle Porter said. “They truly work hard to perfect their cases.”
For weeks now, debaters have been working to improve their skills and gear up for competition, with Lincoln-Douglas and policy debaters focusing on developing cases and extemp debaters honing in on current events.
“As captain, I find it important that my entire team is aware of what kind of arguments and ideas might be presented at a tournament,” policy captain Vihaan Raizada said. “Many people do things very differently, and as a result, many ideas might be new to them. Being able to not only come up with ideas of our own but being able to respond to many kinds of arguments on the fly are skills that can lead to success.”
But, competition day doesn’t signal the end of all the work debaters have put in; students are often working and researching from early in the morning — around 6:30 or 7 a.m. — to late evening at competition.
“The extemp team usually starts debating around 11, so we spend the first few hours there to download articles, discuss current events and potential topics, and go through affirmations,” senior Riya Sharma said. “Then we go to draw (where we get our topic), research what we got and practice our speech for 30 minutes, and then deliver a seven minute speech. Afterwards we typically discuss how rounds went, and work on homework or play cards with each other! At the end of the day, when all rounds for each debate group is over, we all load back into the bus to come back to the front of Liberty and go home!”
And competition day is just as arduous for teachers, as it is for students, especially when it comes to serving as a judge.
“[A typical competition day is very long and challenging,” Porter said. “I am normally judging one of the debates, so I can be trapped in a room for two or more hours at a time. When I am judging, there are no built-in break times. Therefore, I barely have time to check on my debaters, eat or take care of my personal needs.”
But even with some nerves and strain, competition day is for debate students to show off all their work and bond as a team.
“I’m very nervous about the competition as there are a lot of new competitors this time around,” Sharma said. “But, I cannot wait to bond with the whole team, including the other two teams, because I feel like this is when everyone bonds and opens up a lot. I’m looking forward to placing in this competition because I put a lot of effort into learning about current issues around the world and relying less on a notecard when I speak!”
