Vestavia Novice Debate Tournament
On September 19th, Vestavia’s Speech and Debate team hosted their annual Novice Tournament. The tournament was a huge success with competitors from all over Alabama travelling to compete! The Novice Tournament is especially tailored for first year competitors, which gives them the opportunity to learn how a tournament works, and also compete against students with a similar experience level. The Speech and Debate coach Nate Conoly did a fantastic job managing the large tournament while also running the digital system Tabroom used for the competition. Vestavia ended the tournament with a plethora of successful novices across many different events.
First, in Public Forum, we had 7 novice teams compete. The Public Forum debate topic for this tournament was whether or not the Federal Government should regulate AI data center construction. This topic was extremely important, especially in the Birmingham area, as data center construction continues accelerating in the region. For that reason, novices had to be cautious in how they framed their arguments to different judges, who often has predisposed beliefs due to the locality of the topic. Several Vestavia teams concluded with winning records, and Ruopu Lei and Farheen Rahman notably champed Vestavia Novice in the Public Forum division.
In Lincoln Douglas debate, we had 4 new novices, Johnny Wang, Ishan Verma, Anushka Behara, and Emma Donahue, who all placed in the top 10. Lincoln Douglas tends to have more complex debate topics, so it tracks that this tournament’s topic was whether or not space colonization was moral. The nuanced nature of this topic resulted in many diverse arguments, and our debaters did a great job representing Vestavia!
Finally, in speech events, we had many placements across events. In the Original Oratory event, Kanisa Patel and Leo Villalba earned top 10 placements. This event requires a 10 minute memorized speech, persuading their audience to change their view on a specific topic. Additionally, we had many placements in the Impromptu speech event. This event requires quick thinking, as competitors are given 7 minutes total to prep and give a speech based off of a quote.
Our varsity and junior varsity debaters were also involved in running the tournament. Many monitored hallways with extreme caution, while others judged speech and debate rounds. Preparation was evident, with each older debater and speecher training their novices to excel at the tournament. They were integral to Vestavia’s success. Several of these varsities were also key to relieving tournament day stress, treating their novices with gifts of encouragement in the morning before the competition. For example, Veronica Zhang brought in a box of doughnuts for her novices. Many Public Forum varsities brought their novices candy and other goodies to acknowledge the new competitors’ hardwork! Overall, the tournament was a great start to the upcoming debate season, and Vestavia can’t wait to see how the team continues to excel this year!
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