This past summer, a few HT students participated in the National Speech and Debate Tournament. Seniors Reha Patel and Anna Dlugasch were among six HT students who competed in Chicago.
“I’ve gone three times, and it’s always really fun,” Patel said. “It’s a week long and you compete for a few days. It’s a really fun experience because you get to meet different people from across the country and also have fun debating.”
“Nationals was really cool,” Dlugasch said. “We got to travel and it was really cool to see kids from all over the nation who are really passionate about a variety of different topics.”
Within the team, students can choose to compete in different events, including speech, acting, and debate. Patel is one of the veterans on the team and has been participating in speech and debate since seventh grade. She competes in the Lincoln Douglas debate, which is a one-on-one event that focuses on current events and issues.
“The event I do has current topics and issues, and it also has a nuance to it because it talks about the moral and philosophical aspects of arguments,” Patel said. “The round has two people against each other and you debate on a set topic.”
Dlugasch first joined the team in tenth grade and currently competes in congressional debate.
“It’s modeled after the U.S. Congress and we do House and Senate, which are pretty similar, and we’ll have bills and resolutions,” Dlugasch said.
Students who compete in speech and debate can also choose their competition schedule and decide how many competitions they wish to participate in, making speech and debate more accessible to students who are concerned with balancing tournaments with other schoolwork and activities.
“I think getting to choose how many tournaments you want to go to is really helpful because if you’re super busy during a certain time period you don’t have to compete too much,” Patel said. “Also we usually only have practice only once a week, and after you learn the process and how to debate a lot of it is just doing prep on your own, so it’s really easy to balance and do it on your own schedule.”
“It’s really how much or how little you want to do,” Dlugasch added.
Preparation for competitions also varies depending on the event students participate in.
“If you’re doing a speech event, you can memorize your speech and your piece,” Patel explained. “In debate, you have a topic for two months at a time, so you prepare the topic and then you use that preparation for the entire topic and you keep adding to it all the time.”
“About two to three weeks before the tournament, each kid competing in Congress will get a bill packet and then we’ll go through all the bills and we have to write three minute speeches on them,” Dlugasch said. “When we get to the debate, we’ll decide on the docket for the bills for congressional debate and then we’ll debate the bills.”
Students also have many different goals for the ongoing season. Patel hopes to qualify again for the Tournament of Champions, which she was able to participate in last year.
“My goals are to do well for myself, of course, but also to be able to teach all the new students coming to debate or the kids wanting to do congressional debate and how to do it well,” Dlugasch said.
For anyone wanting to join speech and debate, all it takes is a little motivation and a desire to learn.
“You just have to be interested in it and willing to try stuff out,” Dlugasch said. “After I went to the first meeting, I really came to enjoy it and I have a lot of great friends through it and I really enjoy learning more about various topics.”
