Debate: Tournaments of the Season

Lukas Hellberg
Staff Writer
  In the lower E Wing, the Bonneville High School debate team has an extensive trophy case showcasing the past victories that the school has achieved. Hopefully, another trophy is soon to take place alongside the others, as the Bonneville debate team heads to yet another tournament. With many upcoming competitions, there are multiple opportunities for the team to receive new awards.
  Firstly, Rigby High School hosts the Trojan War tournament, which is a major competition that prepares debaters from all over Idaho for the stressful District and National Qualifying tournaments. The Trojan War tournament began on the 27th of January, a day which coincidentally had no school, giving many of the students less work to come back to in the following week. Excitingly, the tournament offered the Duo Retold speech event, which is a unique event in which two students interpret a children’s story by improvising stage cues in a limited amount of time. 
  As for the various regional competitions, students have been preparing for the upcoming District and National Qualifying tournaments. The District tournament is divided between three schools: Blackfoot High School will host Congress, Madison High School will host the other debate events, and Skyline High school will host the unique Big Questions event in which students are given a major philosophical question and debate on the best answer.
  For those uninformed about debate events, there are four main events, excluding Big Questions: 

• Lincoln-Douglas is a solo event where two people debate against each other on a moral issue. 
• Public Forum is a team event where two groups of two people debate on a legal issue using primarily evidence-based arguments.
• Policy is a team event where two groups of two people debate on a single topic for extended periods of time, more than one hour long.
• Congress is a group event where a classroom full of students debate on various topics which change when the students agree to move onto the next topic.

  Recently, Bonneville hosted their own debate tournament alongside Thunder Ridge, which was named Thunderville. Bonneville contributed many things to the school, including judges, concessions, and the invitational letter which was sent out to the participating schools. Thunder Ridge also held a canned food drive in which Bonneville participated. Subsequently, Bonneville won the Humanitarian Award for donating the most canned food out of every participating school, which included almost every school in the Idaho district.
  This time of year tends to be incredibly busy for the Bonneville debate team because of the various qualifying tournaments, which will decide who attends the important competitions and even allowing some students to attend the National tournament in Kentucky. The end of this year’s debate season is coming to an end in only a couple of months. Thus, it is crucial that the team succeeds in the upcoming competitions.