Debate Experience

Starting as a middle school debate tutor in 10th and 11th grade, I worked to teach middle schoolers at the local Falcon Cove Middle about Lincoln-Douglas Debate, my specialty. Then in 12th grade, I was elected to the position of Middle School Liaison, and I organize and run monthly tutoring sessions for high school debaters to volunteer to tutor middle school students in debate.

In High School I win most regional rounds, and usually place (getting medals and trophies) in Lincoln-Douglas debate and earning titles such as Tournament Champion, while getting full or nearly full Speaker Points.

The stage with trophies before they were given out at the Wakefield Flying L speech/debate tournament in late 2023

My friend and I holding medals after winning 4th and 5th place in our respective categories at a CDL tournament

In the summer of 2023, I attended NSD’s summer LD camp for 3 weeks in Minnesota! I learned so much about new ways to debate, and took all this back to my school to teach other new LD debaters. I had lab leaders Rose, Darius, and Vik that were all super accomplished in LD debate (huge shoutout to them), plus rotations of other mentors and teachers interspersed with nearly daily practice rounds. At the end, we had a huge camp-wide tournament, and got to dye our lab leader’s hair pink!

Here’s my NSDA award certificate, which includes my award for Merit, and later Honor due to the number of officially recognized tournament rounds I’ve attended and won.

In addition to competing, I’ve also volunteered at middle and lower high school tournaments to judge speech and debate rounds for lower grade levels (1st through 10th grades) with friends!

I find researching for and writing cases slightly annoying because of how in-depth and organized I tend to make them, but it's all worth it in the end! I really enjoy the critical on-you-feet thinking, public speaking, and quick logic deductions that are involved in debate during every moment of the 35-40 minute rounds, and I've learned some great life skills from debating, along the way!

I’ve been doing Lincoln-Douglas debate since middle school, and I started attending and winning my tournaments in 7th and 8th grade, in both in-person and virtual tournaments.

Before 6th grade, I knew I wanted to do debate as an extracurricular, so I completed a Public Forum debate training intensive for two weeks from ISD (Institute for Speech and Debate) hosted at Nova Southeastern University. Then, I dove into speech and debate throughout middle and high school career!

I find researching for and writing cases so fascinating as I learn about each topic more and more with every competition. I really enjoy the critical on-your-feet thinking, public speaking, and quick logic deductions that are involved in debate during every moment of the 40 minute rounds, and I’ve learned some great life skills from debating, along the way!