RBHS competed in the Parkway West Fall Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament Oct. 11-12. The team had 10 quarterfinalists for debate events and 12 finalists for speech events. The team also placed fifth overall out of 24 teams, setting a high scoring standard for the rest of the season.

“Rock Bridge did really amazing. We had finalists in novice congress and varsity LD [Lincoln Douglas], plus a whole lot of other semi and quarterfinalist competitors,” senior Rachael Erickson, co-captain of the team, said. “[RBHS] also closed out varsity LD.”

Freshmen Kyla Hickcox and Fatimah Yousuf felt proud of their performance, especially for their first tournament. They strive to win the next tournament.

“[Finals] went pretty well, but we were up against some pretty tough competition, and they wouldn’t budge during cross-ex, which is where I normally do the best in,” Hickcox said. “Overall,  [our cross examination] went well, but [it] needs work.”

The team’s success was met with problems: tournament coordinators made errors in tabulating ballots incorrectly leading to some RBHS teams not qualifying past preliminary rounds. 

Policy partners Autumn Slingerland and Zihao Zhou believe the Parkway staff was not carefully transferring judge’s ballots, where the winning and losing sides are noted. Zhou said their win against another team was incorrectly marked as a loss due to negligence from both Parkway’s tabulation room and judge error.

“It was more of a judging error than a tab error, but [the judge] circled the winner as ‘AFF 24B’, [because] 24B was our code, but we were actually the negative team. Reading through the judge’s flow, he clearly stated that [the negative] had better [and] more convincing arguments,” Zhou said. “If [tabulation] even tried to compare our code to the assignment of affirmative/negative, they [should have] seen something”

Zhou and Slingerland confirmed that if there was not an error in ballots, they would have qualified to quarterfinals.

“My plan is to get in touch with Parkway West’s head coach and share what we learned,” Head coach Ben Niewoehner says, reflecting on the experience. “I don’t expect anything can happen. But I can give aw into the teams that deserved a win – even though that wasn’t as represented on the ballot.”

Varsity policy debater Taisheng Li believes that debate is a great extracurricular. Li, along with his partner Samaranjay Goyal, was able to qualify to quarterfinals, where they were defeated on a three-to-zero decision by Jefferson City’s Graham Bond and Ainsley Corwin.

“Although the concepts are very abstract, it does teach you how to way different plans to determine which are the most beneficial to society,” Li said. “I joined debate because when I lived in Jefferson City all my family friends did debate”.

Policy is a form of debate where the affirmative implements a plan for a topic and the negative argues why the plan is flawed. The resolution changes each year; this year’s topic is: “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce Direct Commercial Sales and/or Foreign Military Sales of arms from the United States.”

A significant increase from last year, 37 students from RBHS competed at the invitational,. The team plans to compete in Troy Buchanan’s debate-only tournament on Nov. 2.

“The kids we have this year are absolutely fantastic- kind, passionate, dedicated, and fun. It’s also a little bit relaxing to know that there’s a role for you on the team other than being just a competitor,” Erickson said. “I’m super lucky to have a great co-captain [Will Cover] and leadership team who do most of the heavy lifting in teaching novices how to succeed.”

Do you like public speaking activities? Let us know in the comments below. 

[penci_info_box _text=”Shruti Gautam and Rachael Erickson – tied for 1st in varsity Lincoln Douglas
Amira Mckee and Anna Xu – 4th in varsity Public Forum
Taisheng Li and Samaranjay Goyal – 5th in varsity Policy
Kevin Mao and Paige Sells – 5th in novice Policy
Kyla Hickcox and Fatimah Yousuf – 5th in novice policy” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-trophy” _use_line=”true” block_id=”penci_info_box-1571079302646″ _title=”Debate Events” title_color=”#2bb673″][penci_info_box _text=”Will Cover – 1st in domestic extemporaneous speaking; 3rd in informative speaking
Ben Kimchi – 2nd in informative speaking
Memphis Cutchlow – 6th in informative speaking
Charlotte Tolly – 4th in original oratory
Autumn Slingerland – 6th in congressional debate
Vishnu Arun – 3rd in congressional debate” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-trophy” _use_line=”true” block_id=”penci_info_box-1571078055462″ _title=”Varsity Independent Events” title_color=”#2bb673″][penci_info_box _text=”Kyla Hickcox – 1st in informative speaking; 5th in informative speaking
Saim Naqvi, Yogev Angelovici, Kevin Mao – competitors in congressional debate supersession
Izn Naqvi – 1st in congressional debate” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-trophy” _use_line=”true” block_id=”penci_info_box-1571078946632″ _title=”Novice Independent Events” title_color=”#2bb673″]