Debate is having an amazing season on this 2024 season. Multiple members have been 4-0, meaning that they have a winning streak in topics while competing this season dominating over 20 to 30 different schools througfso thatfhout the district.
The debates that are at a high school level are formatted, so that it is a two on two debate where there are two debaters representing for the topic, and the other two representing against the topic. Then, the opposing speaker gives their opening case. After that, the team for the topic give their opening claim , and then there is a grace period to come up with rebuttals. After the grace period, the opposing team starts with there rebbuttles trying to back up their idea for against the topic while trying to defeat the supporting arguments. Then each team has a second chance for a rebuttal during their closing statement with the affirmative team speaking last. After that, the judges decide a winner for that round.
“As first speaker, because there’s two people, I have to give our opening case, and that is a six minute long speech,” junior Jae Cunningham explained.
Students joined the debate team for many different reasons. Some joined because of having either a friend or family member in the team or a team and some join to take up some time or because they like to argue and learn more. At the school there are posters on the cork-boards all around school advertising to join clubs.
Junior capitan Ella Venzke said that she “saw a poster near the lunch room and was like, you know I’ll show up.”
Now Venzke is a team captain for the debate team. Other students such as Cunningham who said that he was invited via email from coach and social studies teacher Wayne Perkins to show up to an informational meeting.
“I knew debate because my cousin was involved with it when he was in high school, and I really like arguing. I really like talking and really like getting involved with politics,” Venzke said when asked about why she wanted to join
The process to prepare for a new topic includes a lot of brainstorming and a ton of research. The topic first gets chosen by a selected committee of coaches. Then the team sits down, and brainstorm what they already know about this topic without doing any research.
“We take a whiteboard, draw a line down the middle and be like ok what are ideas that generally support this, and what are the ideas that generally negate this? So we usually start off by just brainstorming, and then we go off individually and try and find research that either backs that or doesn’t and just kinda go from there,” Venzke said.
The debate team has been around since 1991-92 started by Todd Herring who originated the entire league that the team debates in when he was working at SAHS. Perkins started this year as a head coach. But for the past two years, he has been an assistant coach. He took over the position of head coach after four other teachers before him. The team in the past has had a great track record, but this year they are dominating over the whole league witch consists of 20-30 teams. But the balance between debate and school, that is a different story. There are students in the team such as Venzke who works two jobs and is a captain for the team and who is super academicaly involved who has to juggle both debate and school and two jobs. Perkins, the head coach, teaches all day meaning that he does not have a prep hour. Then he goes from teaching to running debate for two hours after school and competing on Saturdays during the season.
“Debate does become your life,” Venzke said, “and a lot of your life circles around debate, but what you really come to know is that you find a way to make it to work your way around it.”
This season the first topic was about weather or not the U.S. should make a binding comitment to carbon neutrality by 2050,”That one was really fun because arguing for both sides was really hard because I’m someone who is pretty pro being active on climate”, Cunningham added. The second topic is learning about whether or not commitment to Ukraine is beneficial for NATO.
“It’s just interesting to learn about both sides,” Cunningham said.
The debate team has a great start so far to the season and are hoping to continue this momentum throughout the rest of the season.
“If you have an interest you should join. we’ve got an amazing community, and it looks really good under collage applications, and we have a lot of fun doing it,” Venzke said.
