A whopping 96 teams of students convened at Plano Senior High School on September 3rd, for the first debate tournament of the year. Jesuit achieved a closeout: students placed first, second and fifth!
The Jesuit debate team performed very well at the tournament, with Beomhak Lee ’17 and Alandro Valdez ’17 and the team of seniors Jake LoRocco and Emmanuel Ruiz placing first and second, along with senior Zach Watts and sophomore Jack Moore taking fifth place honors.
But what really happens at debate tournaments?
Zach Watts explained: “In general, we arrive at the tournaments early to wait for pairings to come out as we refine our blocks against known arguments that other teams are running; once pairings come out, we go to our rooms, trade information about the affirmative being run and previous negative strategies with our opponents, have the two-hour debate, then regroup with other Jesuit debaters and repeat the process until we’re finished with rounds for that day. (Of course, there’s time for getting something to eat during the day.)” A debate tournament is really as rigorous and exhausting as any athletic tournament. Nevertheless, Ranger debaters managed to get the job done.
Beomhak Lee, who was also the best speaker of the tournament, commented that “In terms of competitive success, the Plano debate tournament was fantastic. Plano almost always is the first tournament that Jesuit debate team attends, and even this year they served us well.”
In consensus with Lee, Jack Moore expressed that “I think we did very well. Winning a tournament this early in the season makes it a lot easier to qualify for the state tournament. I also think Zach and I did very well because this tournament was my first varsity tournament.”
All of these teams earned points towards qualifying towards the state tournament. Lee exclaimed his excitement for the year and the team in general: “I really do not think there is one area that the team can improve on, rather, if we could continue this momentum, it would be great! I genuinely mean it because everyone is working very hard to contribute to ‘the collective’ and I think that was the reason why we could have had such a successful debate tournament at Plano, we should continue this momentum and hope for the later grateful things to come in the future!”
And the future does look promising. The team has already exceeded expectations and shows no signs of stopping.
