The Speech & Debate team attended The Longhorn Classic Speech & Debate tournament held at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). This was the first major tournament the team has attended this year and while meager in terms of accomplishments, shows promise for a successful second semester for the team.
The Longhorn Classic is a qualifying tournament for the Tournament of Champions, which is a prestigious national tournament for Speech & Debate events. Because of this, UT draws in strong competition from all around the country.
“It’s definitely different from a local, but mostly because of the level of competition and the size of campus,” the captain of policy debate Riley Emerson said. “At a large tournament like this, the competition is fierce.”
The team’s varsity policy debate team, Laine Yates and Riley Emerson, won three of their six pre-elimination rounds.
“I am quite content with how I placed,” Riley said. “We went 3-3 which is higher than my goal of 2-4, so I feel pretty good about it. There is room to improve, but I’d say it could have gone worse.”
The new policy team, Jocelyn Conney and Chelsea Tijerino, lost all of their rounds but fought well in the varsity division and got to learn from some of the best debaters in the country.
In Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Ava Owens also lost all of her rounds, but plans to grow from her experience.
“I will continue refining my skills until I am perfect at the art of it,” Ava Owens said.
Addison Harris and Jazlin Robison participated in Duo Interpretation for the second time this season, placing 2nd and 4th in their pre-elimination rounds, not quite qualifying for the eliminations, but showing good initial promise.
Nyx Thanos participated in Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking, placing 3rd and 4th in her pre-elimination rounds, also just missing the mark to qualify for the later rounds.
Preparing for a tournament of this scale requires significant effort.
“There were a lot of things I did to prepare for this tournament, primarily working on my speaking and the arguments we were going to run,” Riley said. “I did a lot of speaking drills over Thanksgiving break with the intention of increasing my clarity and speed.”
For the team, preparation is as much about teamwork as it is about individual practice.
“I also helped out a lot of the people who were attending alongside us, like my fellow Debate II students,” Riley said. “They were doing different events, but I did everything I could to help them be prepared, whether that’s assisting them in memorizing their lines or monitoring a practice speech, I did it.”
Over the duration of the actual tournament, it serves as a great team-building experience.
“Even though it was a minimal time period I had to do so, the team-bonding was great,” Ava Owens said.
The team is now preparing to attend the The Cougar Classic Speech & Debate tournament at the University of Houston in January.
