Kellenberg’s National and State Speech and Debate Qualifiers. Theresa Stein (2nd from left middle row).
Article by PhoenixOnline writer Zoe Argenziano ’27
A few weeks ago, the debate team competed at the national level from the comfort of their own homes!
A select group of students was chosen to participate in the Columbia University Invitational Tournament, consisting of over 135 teams from all over the nation. The tournament was done completely over Zoom calls. It’s amazing that in our current world, we can incorporate technology into making high school events easier for students, parents, and educators.
The competition started on Friday night with two rounds of preliminaries, otherwise referred to as “prelims.” These are the initial set of rounds where all individuals compete to determine which levels the competitors will compete at. These do not involve any eliminations, but simply act as sorting rounds.
On Saturday, the competitors went through four additional rounds of prelims. After these preliminary rounds, the competitor finds out if they are moving on to “bracket-style” competitions. Here, eliminations start to occur and competitors step up their game even more.
The three main events in debate tournaments, created by the National Speech and Debate Associations, are Lincoln-Douglas (LD), Public Forum (PF), and Policy Debate for novice divisions. For all of these, competitors are given an opinionated statement and have to argue either for or against it. Overall, these tournaments shed light on ethical, geographical, economic, and environmental issues.
Freshman Theresa Stein was on a roll this weekend, coming in second place overall! She won her quarterfinals, then the semifinals, and finally got to compete at the final round. Theresa quotes, “I may not have won the final round, but it was a great experience. I’m super glad I got to do it—coming in second is really exciting.”
It was a great event for the debate team. Congratulations to Theresa Stein and the rest of our debaters. After this tournament’s results, it is clear that the team will crush the next tournament!
