The speech and debate team is a small yet impactful part of the high school. The team consists of few members and a single coach.
Senior Liam Stillwell has been an active member of the team since his freshman year. A vital skill Stillwell uses is knowing various sources, which he utilizes during his debates.
“Some of the biggest skills any debater has is being able to use sources and come up with sources as soon as they can. Being able to really understand the issues and go beyond that surface-level detail to really have that knowledge that can win a debate,” Stillwell said.
Stillwell prefers the debating aspect over speech and hopes one day to become a master debater. Although Stillwell prefers debate, he still uses critical skills in speech, particularly extemp, which is a spontaneous form of debate that is almost entirely improvised,
“I mostly have been doing extemp, it’s almost a slower form because it has much longer speeches, but I also like debate because it’s a lot more fast-paced and more quick thinking versus like the long rhetorical thinking of extemp,” Stillwell said.
The stress of speech and debate can be overwhelming for the average person, but Stillwell and others students on the speech and debate team have been conditioned to manage this stress using different methods,
“I think that with speech and debate the most important thing I do is plan ahead and try to imagine things one move ahead,” Stillwell said.
Students on the speech and debate team may struggle on some topics, as they can be more difficult to debate or give a speech on.
Sophomore Avery Diette works on her favorite aspect of speech and debate, being speech,
“I prefer speech because all the years I’ve done speech and debate, I have always done speech. I like it more because I enjoy talking about things that I love,” Diette said.
Although speech is exciting, Diette still faces the challenges of speech and debate.
“I think the hardest part about speech for me is memorizing the pieces that I do,” Diette said.
Members of the team explore different topics and types of speech and debate, but they are not always able to practice them. One of Diette’s favorite categories is storytelling, which is using persuasive techniques to make a speech more relatable for the audience,
“I really like the category of speech called storytelling. I think that’s a really fun one, so I would love to do a storytelling speech,” Diette said.
Members of the speech and debate team are working through the current season, and hope to flourish in the future. All in all, with their current efforts they will likely have a very successful season.
