RBHS forensics competed in Troy Buchanan High School’s debate tournament on Nov. 2nd. The team won fourth place overall in sweepstakes and took home seven individual trophies. Significant placements include freshmen Carmen Marr finishing in third for novice Lincoln Douglas (LD) debate and siblings Ben and Emma Kimchi achieving a fourth place for varsity public forum.

Juniors Vishnu Arun and Quinn Tyler fought to second place in varsity policy debate. The duo devotes their success at the tournament to the policy team’s grueling preparation.

“One way we prepared was having a full day of practice rounds [the day before the tournament.] We made a schedule and [had all the RBHS teams] practice against each other,” Arun said. “We also made our case better and created pre-prepared negative arguments for possible affirmative arguments we would encounter.”

The team sent five varsity and three novice partnerships to compete at Troy.

Freshman LD debater Nora Pushechnikova said her motivation to do well is her extensive practice for the tournament.

“I guess my motivation is the fact that if I worked hard and end up doing well,” Pushechnikova said. “I get [my motivation] from [placing well] after practicing hard.”

Freshman policy debaters Saim Naqvi along with his partner Yogev Angelovici contribute their losing record at the tournament to their opponents using illegal arguments not allowed by tournament administration. They said they want to do better for the upcoming tournament hosted at Clayton and Ladue High school.

“We did face a lot of hardships actually; Yogev and I went 2-3. We had to come up with some topicality arguments. [We had to make topicality arguments because] the other team was cheating and being abusive and running an illegal plan, essentially their plan is not on topic,” Naqvi said. “My motivation [for] Ladue are my novice peers. We all stick together and hope for the best for each other.”

Due to the pace at which tournaments are run, judges are often the ones who decide if a debater has broken the rules or not.

The team faced significant adversities after multiple people dropped from the tournament. Juniors Lola Gingrich said she and her partner, Audrey Snyder dropped because of not being prepared enough.

“My partner and I were excited for the tournament,” Gingrich said.  “We partnered at the last minute and knew no matter how hard we tried we wouldn’t be prepared to our satisfaction in time.”

Two-day tournaments can be a struggle for debaters, having to use absolute focus can be a challenge. Troy was a one day, five preliminary round tournament that encompassed seven hours of debate. Sophomore Nina Schneider said competing consecutively for five rounds can end up being a challenge. Schneider does LD debate, and with each LD round being up to 45 minutes each, the rounds in total hours debate 2 ½  consecutive hours of debate.

“[Debating] for five consecutive rounds was certainly tiring, but I accepted the challenge,” Schneider said. “It was nice being [able] to get home at a reasonable hour as we [left Troy] after awards, which got us home by 9 p.m.”

On top of debating five consecutive rounds, Arun believes a significant obstacle in debate is having to appeal to inexperienced or lay judges.

“[We have to overcome] the struggle of appealing to lay [versus] appealing to flow judges. Lay judges are usually regular people that are maybe parents of debaters that don’t really know what they are doing, and flow judges are people who have judged debate before or are debaters themselves,” Arun said. “It was very hard to endure through [ five] rounds of debate that were an hour and a half [long] with no breaks in between.

The extracurricular can be overwhelming at certain points, but Schneider said it is extremely rewarding to go to a tournament. Schneider recommends debate to anyone who is interested in competing.

“My advice for anyone that is considering joining debate is to try it. Even if you don’t decide to stick with it, its an awesome opportunity to be exposed to a new environment and get connected to an awesome group of people,” Schneider said. “Debate events are specifically difficult but you’ll reap great benefits in relation to your public speaking abilities, research skills, and argument analysis.”

How do you find motivation to compete?