The 16-6A UIL District Policy Debate Meet was held between Cy-Fair schools. At the meet, Langham went home with first place in policy debate, with a qualifying team to the 6A UIL Policy Debate State tournament.

Two teams from Langham competed: Riley Emerson & Laine Yates, and Jocelyn Conney & Chelsea Tijerino.

Emerson & Yates won all three 3 rounds, receiving the highest placement at the competition. 

Conney & Tijerino received 5th place at the competition.

Emerson & Yates are now qualified to enter the state competition. This will be their second time attending; last year they won 5 out of the 6 pre-elimination rounds and cleared to the octafinal elimination round (top 16 teams) of the tournament, where they lost to Memorial High School.

“I expect to at least break at UIL state,” junior Riley Emerson said. “Hopefully we win enough preliminary rounds so that we have the opportunity to go to the elims [sic] and maybe to quarters, semis, or finals. That would be really fun and a great opportunity.”

Policy debate is a partnered event, where teams are expected to debate over a year-round topic about government policy.

“This year, the topic is intellectual property rights,” Emerson said. “Things like patents, trademarks, and copyrights. It’s a pretty boring topic, but still fun. People run a lot of different arguments in policy so it’s hard to get bored.”

Unlike most debate tournaments, UIL has very specific rules debaters are expected to adhere to.

“UIL style of debate is extremely unique when it comes to policy,” Emerson said. “It is very strict and traditional, meaning that the students have to dress fancy, and they are forced to make very traditional arguments. All of the recent debate innovations are thrown out the window during UIL.” 

The UIL state tournament will take place the week after Spring Break at the University of Texas at Austin campus.