httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV2TWUY60r4
Video by Casey Clifford & Keaton McAuliffe
Keaton McAuliffe
Reporter
On Saturday, Nov. 17, the November Connecticut Debate Association (CDA) debate tournament was hosted at NCHS. The debate team competed against 12 other schools in both the novice and varsity sections. Many novice pairs were undefeated after 3 initial 48-50 minute rounds were completed. Their 3-0 records signified that they were halfway to qualifying for the state championships.
The varsity team was also successful during the tournament, many pairs fulfilling their own 3-0 records. The duo of Alexandra Klapper and Alejandra Zamora took home a third place trophy. New Canaan was advanced to the final round, which was held in the cafeteria at 3:30 p.m. and was open to public viewing, but was unable to compete. Overall, the team finished in third place.
In addition to many victories in competition, the debate team was also successful in hosting the event at the high school. The event lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and with over 200 debaters and spectators travelling to NCHS. Accommodating all of the visitors would seem to be a challenge, however, according to Debate team coach and advisor Kristine Goldhawk, “The first time we hosted, that was the most stressful one because you never know what’s going to pop up,” she said. “But really we get support from facilities, we get support from technology and tons of support from Mr. Rothman and the administration. So between them and parents I don’t have too much to do!”
Debate team treasurer sophomore Steven Singer said that the key to hosting is the food. Joe’s Pizza and Breuggers Bagels are the main suppliers of tournament food. “When you’re dealing with the amount of people that come to a debate tournament, we have to deal with all the food in order to feed all the people,” Steven said. “We work with a lot of the local businesses, local pizzerias and breakfast places to supply the bagels, the pizza and we also use utensils from the school.”
In addition to preparing to host the tournament, the team had to prepare to compete as well. “We have actually been working and practicing since the week before school started,” Ms. Goldhawk said. “We generally have two hour practices every Wednesday night where we work on various skills.”
Junior Gita Abhiraman, an executive board member on the team, stressed the importance of these skills, “One of the things that we do going into a tournament is practice our organizational skills because debate is really centered around the structure of your speeches,” she said. “What we do during practice is drill each other on how to format three solid contentions, support these arguments, and speak persuasively.”
Such skills include cross-examination, which is when each team responds to and challenges the opponent’s argument. Although the team practices basic skills quite thoroughly, senior Co-Captain Alexandra Cohen says that there isn’t much else you can do to prepare. “This is a regular CDA style debate which means we are going to have a packet so there’s not really much that we can do ahead of time,” Alex said. “But what I usually do and I recommend this to everyone else is to watch news from a couple of weeks before because that’s where they’ll get their topics from. Make sure that you’re up to date with foreign policy and everything like that.”
The topic of the final round did include foreign interactions. The top two teams had to debate whether the U.S. should adopt a first strike policy for cyber warfare. The teams assuming the roles of either the affirmative or the negative were Wilton and Ridgefield, Wilton filling New Canaan’s former spot.
Gita felt that the tournament was a success in both the area of competition and the area of hosting, “We definitely had large participation from our team and showed some strong results,” she said. “But more than anything its the amount of effort and dedication our team showed. I think that’s more important than anything else.”
For information on the next debate tournament, click here
