At the Elk Grove Debate Tournament, the Debate Team earned two awards, best presiding officer and best legislation, and hopes to do well in their next tournament at Addison Trail High School.
Debate member Abby Hsiao won the two awards for the team during their last competition. She ran the debate chamber for best presiding officer and wrote one of the bills that was debated for best legislation.
“Our Debate Team does Congressional debate, the same kind of debate conducted in representative houses in America. The bills for debate are written by students from different schools, and we get time to research pro and con points for each bill between competitions,” Hsiao said.
The team looks forward to future competitions. They are trying to do their best, earn awards, and see themselves become the best they can.
“I’d honestly like to improve and maybe even win an award. It is hard, but at the same time, that means that if you win an award, you’ve done really well because only the top three people get an award,” said research captain Zach Raven.
Debate is moving forward and is trying to improve all the time.
“One of our big things this year is that we have a lot of young people, so part of our plan is to keep the young people involved, keep them going and doing research, and speaking and keep building skills,” said Debate coach Dustin Zubert.
The team is well prepared for their debates and practices often. They do all kinds of warm ups and have worked hard to do well.
“We start every meeting with tongue twisters for warm up; then we do speaking exercises, such as impromptu speeches. We also discuss research techniques and do mock debates when research is prepared,” Hsiao said.