Record Breaking Debate Tournament

Many honors were received by Hastings High debaters who participated in the Lincoln Southwest tournament that turned out to reach some great milestones for our school.
One of the debate team’s first time Lincoln-Douglas style debaters and Hastings High senior, Maggie Nielsen, explained her thoughts of how the tournament went.
“The challenging thing for me was the overall aspect of speaking,” said Nielsen.
She was previously a Presiding Officer for Congress debate, and didn’t do much speaking.
This was her first time with this style and this much talking. Overall, Nielsen said, “I can tell you that at the end of the day, my mouth was tired.”
Amongst new styles, there were many other exciting firsts at this tournament.
Sydney Nelson got 1st place in Novice Congress, Caiden Henry-Perlich got an outstanding PO award, and most exciting of all, Landon Power got 1st place Lincoln- Douglas speaker and overall champion- the first time for our school in ten years.
Of course, Power was proud of his personal accomplishment.
“For my team, I was most proud of us getting 4th place out of 20 schools,” Power said.
The debate team’s faithful leader and Hastings High teacher, Delta Fajardo, had some great insight on what went down.
Besides Power’s win, there were many other successes of the debate team at this particular tournament.
Another great and difficult accomplishment was that of Sydney Nelson, who was awarded champion in Congress.
From the leader herself, Fajardo said, “This is very unfair to those who are involved in Congress who, in my opinion, have a harder job than the other types of debates.”
In her own words, she said, “This is one of our best tournament experiences at Lincoln Southwest in 15 years!”
Although there were a few things that, in most tournaments in general, are conflicting. According to Fajardo, according to what she’s seen, some debaters often create alliances for the sole purpose of keeping others from winning.
She also believes this could be to make the chances of themselves winning more likely. With everything taken into account, this tournament was not only another award to the Hastings High School Debate Team’s name, but a great reputation buster for our school.