Hastings High School’s Debate team has plowed their way through state debate.
Over the weekend the Debate team headed to State Debate gaining opportunities of a lifetime. A group of seven students prepared speeches and legislatives for the two day event.
“State Debate is one of the only two day tournaments we compete in, so maintaining endurance was pretty tough. On Friday, sessions started at 2pm and didn’t end till 9pm. Then the very next day, it started at 8:30am and didn’t end till 4:30pm. There were some breaks, but I was in session for a total of 12 hours over the course of the two days. Endurance for debate might sound silly, but imagine tuning into CSPAN for 12 straight hours, but instead of just watching it, you’re judged on input and participation,” Senior Pauline Jonglertham said.
The preparing process is more rigorous than the normal preparation of a normal tournament.
“For the week leading up to the tournament, I did lots of general research on roughly 9 pieces of legislation. The research for each piece of legislation takes about an hour, and only after general research do I pick a side. After that, I drafted speeches I would give during the session, which also took me about an hour per speech,” Jonglertham said.
Although the days are long for state debate, they help students continue to grow and expand their debating knowledge.
“I wanted to go to State for the sole reason that I wanted to get better. This year has been really rough for me because it was my first year of varsity debate, and my performance shows this. State was ultimately a test for me to see if I truly have improved. I didn’t necessarily produce the results I wanted, however I believe I have gained the proper experience and motivation from State that I needed in order to be ready and do better next year,” Sophomore Achner Ramirez Calderon said.
Students from all across the state come together to debate multitudes of topics and get to compete creating higher stakes than typical tournaments.
“As a competitor, you can definitely tell that State’s a lot more competitive than regular season tournaments. Once debate starts it’s clear everyone’s prepped the legislation, which means there’s lots of tough questions being asked during questioning as well as great refutation within speeches. Super Congress (finals) especially — even just being in the room was intimidating, but competing in it was exhilarating in a way,” Jonglertham said.
This experience for students allows them to compete on a high basis while still expanding their own knowledge and understanding in debate.
“Already I am becoming a much stronger public speaker, and I’m overcoming my fear of messing up.” freshman Keira Erickson said.
Pauline Jonglertham, the president of the debate team won an award at a state competition with her diligent debating skills.
“I did win an award; based on my prelim performance, I qualified for Super Congress, which is the finals for debate. There were three seperate houses for prelims, each which debated three prelim sessions, and afterwards, the top five in each house advanced to the finals. I got a paper-weight-looking-type award which is fun.” Jonglertham said.
State Debate has been an amazing experience for all students that attended and most are hoping to keep going back and keep improving through the years.
“I progressed a good amount in this tournament and learned a lot of things. It overall strengthened the drive for me to improve at my craft,” Calderon said.
