By Anna Kate Bailey and Parker Liu
The first Novice Debate Tournament is typically held by Vestavia Hills High School in mid-September. Although Vestavia was unable to host the tournament last year, Novice 2023 returned to Vestavia Hills High School this year. The tournament is restricted to “novice debaters,” and for most of the competitors, it is their first time competing in either speech or debate events.
What events are there?
Public Forum (PF) - Public Forum is a form of debate where a team of two compete against another team of two. The topic of PF often revolves around current world events, hence the name, “public forum.” One team supports the resolution while the other opposes the resolution.
Lincoln Douglas (LD) - This form of debate is a one-on-one competition between two debaters and was inspired by the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. The topics typically emphasize ethics and philosophy. Just like Public Forum, one side supports the resolution while the other opposes it.
Speech - Unlike PF or LD, speech events do not contain any form of arguing. Instead, presentations are given by one or two speakers and are judged against other presentations. There are two main events, public address events and interpretation events. Public address events showcase a prewritten speech while interpretation events feature a performance of published material.
This year, Vestavia’s novice speech and debate team took the competition by storm. Vestavia’s Public Forum team swept, holding places 1-5, with every team placing in the top ten.
Grace Ding and Veronica Zhang - 1st
Dev Patel and Yash Pillai - 2nd
Arhaan Lalani and Pratul Danasekar - 3rd
Anna Kate Bailey and Ishaan Singh - 4th
Abigail Wang and Sophia Li - 5th
James Reeves and Isa Esguerra - 9th
In Lincoln Douglas, Vestavia debaters took 4 of the top ten spots!
Aditya Sheelavant - 1st
Eric Wang - 2nd
Judy Yamani - 4th
Sreekrishna Chintareddy - 8th
Our speech team also did an incredible sweep, with
Ruogu Lei - 1st in DI and 7th in Impromptu
Lily Xie - 3rd in DI and 5th in Impromptu
Annie Hu - 1st in HI
ZhuZhu Wang - 1st in Impromptu and 2nd in OO
Vivian Lin - 1st in Informative and 2nd in Impromptu
Tina Lou - 2nd in Informative and 4th in Impromptu
Daniel Cheng - 4th in Informative and 6th in Impromptu
Cuewon Kim - 3rd in Informative
Mariam Malik - 3rd in OO
Avery Brooks - 5th in OO
Aleena Farooqui - 6th in OO
Looking back on the tournament, our novices and varsities had only good things to say! Some notable favorite parts of the tournament were:
“meeting new people and getting feedback on my skills”
“watching my progression as rounds went on”
and “learning lots.”
When asked about how they felt the tournament went, a varsity reported, “I was so impressed by the novices. They really worked so hard!”
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