Johnson students went to the Boerne High School to attend the debate competition on Oct. 19. At the end of the competition, three students placed in the finals. Students who participate in debate meet every second Wednesday of the month in room 279 to practice their events and help one another improve with the feedback that they receive. The team also competed on Oct. 26 at Hays High School for their annual Hays Hawkoween tournament and will compete again on Nov. 8 and 9.
“I thought it was a good competition because I think there were over 90 people, but it definitely felt great to make it through. I was very excited,” senior Grace Stoddad said.
There are 30 pieces of legislation that other debaters submit; debaters research and write speeches either in support or against the legislation. When competing, students argue the legislation, and at the end, they vote on the legislation as a chamber. Stoddard competed in the Congress event.
“I was very excited for prelims because I did a cartwheel before one of my speeches and I’ve never done that before, so it was definitely fun, definitely goofy,” Stoddard said.
At the tournament, senior Cara Morris competed in informative and made it to sixth place in the finals.
“I felt surprised because in my first round, I got sixth and in the second one I got second, so it averaged me out to make it to finals. It was really nice and surprising cause like I just like didn’t want to compete after the first round,” Morris said.
Informative debate is when students have ten minutes to prepare a ten minute speech on the topic they receive and create visuals that go along further to help get the point across.
“One of my main feedbacks is to expand on my introduction, so I’m changing that and I want to memorize the speech more,” Morris said.
Mr.Harris, the debate coach, focuses on improving his students and works with students who are in individual debates or in any other debate so he can ensure growth.
”I’m trying to figure out what exact skills and things they can do in the next round to push them a little bit further,” Harris said.
Harris enjoys watching his student’s debates and having new people watch.
“I thought it was really fun. I think that I had a lot of students come to see what debate was like, which was cool. A lot of them were trying to reach out to different events for the first time,” Morris said.
Johnson debaters are working to get to the state tournament which requires state points.
“It was exciting to see both the competitive success that they found as a result of the work that I see them doing in class,” Harris said.
