This last Saturday, April 25th, four cadets attended the SCISA Debate Tournament in Columbia, SC at Cardinal Newman. We had two teams of two cadets each, one competing at the varsity level and one competing at the novice level. Last year, our novice team which consisted of Tyler Willson and Matthew Wong won the novice level with Cadet Willson also winning top individual scorer. This year, Cadet Wong returned at the varsity level to lead our team as our debate club president. Collier Smith paired off with him at the varsity level, having demonstrated phenomenal research and oratory skills during our in-house competition. Competing at our novice level were other first time SCISA debaters Jeet Pichika and Josiah Hart who helped to create an extensive research document.
These four cadets researched this year’s debate topic extensively. As the debate format is “Public Forum,” the teams debate on a resolution, and this year the resolution was “State Governments in the United States should end all judicial elections.” This has been a challenging topic for them to research, but they are prepared to debate both the pros and cons of this resolution. The cadets had to demonstrate full knowledge of the topic as they did not know whether they would argue “pro” or “con” until they entered the debate room and flipped a coin.
While we did not come out with a victory this time, our debaters still performed well, earning good scores, and having a good idea of what to expect and prepare for in future debates. Next year, Cadet Pichika has already expressed he will be returning to lead our incoming debate team to what will hopefully be our next victory.
Several cadets have already expressed their interest in being on the debate team next year and have been practicing for an end of year in-house debate to hone their skills in preparation for next year.
Please congratulate the team for their hard work and effort in competing this year, and wish next year’s team luck as we start thinking about what lies ahead.
-CPT Matthew Shields