The Speech and Debate team traveled to the University of California – Berkeley for a national tournament from February 16-20.

“This one [tournament] is far more difficult than pretty much any other tournament we go to in the regular season,” Debate Teacher Eric Beane said. “It is no exaggeration to say that the work students do, the amount of preparation is definitely on par with the master’s thesis across the year, so it is a huge amount of research, a huge amount of practice, but it did pay off at the tournament this year.”

Since the end of November, the competitors have been attending designated prep sessions and meetings after school to practice for the tournament.

“Before competing, I wasn’t too nervous because I’ve been pretty prepared this season,” senior Lauren Hernandez said. “I just knew that this wasn’t such a high-stakes tournament for me and I really just wanted to enjoy the scenery at UC Berkeley.”

For many of the students, this tournament was the first time they had traveled out of state for a debate competition. 

“I absolutely fell in love with the Berkeley campus,” senior Vimala Nair said. “Houston is definitely a concrete jungle, concrete everywhere and flat lands, but California was greenery and city life; it had a mixture of everything, so that changed up the atmosphere.”

The environment and scenery change showed how far debate can carry the students, inspiring many to continue debate.

“Other than competing, which was really fun, the time that me and my teammates got to explore the city, a place that we had never been to, was really cool,” senior Spencer Benton said. “And we got to see UC Berkeley, which is a really cool campus that a lot of people like, so that was fun.”

Despite not performing as well as he wanted to, Benton is grateful for the new knowledge he obtained from this tournament and awards he received.

“As the season’s coming to an end, I qualified for the state championship and I earned a bid to compete at nationals,” Benton said. “We also have UIL district next month and our last state championship, so I’m just hoping to do the best that I can with those last few tournaments.”

The team took home several awards, continuing the school’s tradition of success and setting high expectations for the future. 

“Overall, I thought we did really well,” Mr. Beane said. “We were very successful in policy debate, reaching the octafinals, top 16 in the country, which is phenomenal for our Debate I students. Overall, we had a pretty good tournament.”