Manitou Springs High School introduced the new Speech and Debate team at the start of September. They have only recently started their meetings, but they are excited to start off the season and hopefully start tournaments soon this year.
The Speech and Debate team is a place where students practice different types of debates and speeches so they can participate in a variety of speech events where they talk about different problems around the world, or really anything they can debate. The Speech and Debate team all agree that having relationships with each other is beneficial and encourages communication.
Becket Wendell-Evans, a senior and a student leader of the Speech and Debate team, thinks that the most important aspect about speech and debate is your ability and confidence to speak and communicate. “The most important factor in this club is your confidence in your ability to talk. Debate Club, It’s not just debate, it’s speech, but it’s all something that involves you presenting with your words, with your actions, anything that requires you to be confident,” Wendell-Evans said.
Wendell-Evans also thinks that building relationships is another important thing to have in Speech and Debate. “In some of the debates we practice, you will be paired up with other people from your team, and building good relationships with them is imperative to having good synergy with your arguments,” Wendell-Evans said, “so you have to know each other and what your partner might say, so you can support each other and build on top of one another.”
Paul Gilbert, the coach of the new Speech and Debate team has certain ways he likes to teach his students. “We have practice debates and practice speaking,” Gilbert said.
Meggan Milliron, a junior and a new member of the Speech and Debate team, is excited to jumpstart this year with her teammates and hopefully reach all her goals and form relationships along the way. “My goals are to speak better to people and be able to express my opinions in a proper and polite way,” Milliron said. “By the end of this, I hope that I’m able to bond a bit more with my teammates and also be able to freely find more self confidence when speaking in conversations and opinionated situations.”
Trey Fitzgerald, a freshman and a member of the Speech and Debate team, thinks that being able to voice your opinions is an important factor to have in the club. “An important aspect about this new debate club is, especially at times like these, being able to voice ideas without being afraid of discrimination and attacks on your ideas, then also being able to speak your ideas freely,” Fitzgerald said.
Wendell-Evans says that they practice their skills by debating different topics that they choose. “So far, we have decided that every day we meet we’re going to go over a different sort of topic,” Wendell-Evans said. “We have different sections in debate competitions like original oratory or certain types of debates with different subjects or categories. And so each of these days we’re going to go over a different one. We can pick and choose which ones we want to train ourselves on.”
Milliron feels that Speech and Debate is a good thing to have because you are able to argue about your opinions in a proper and neat way. “What I think is really wonderful about speech and debate is that you’re able to argue with someone over a topic that is civilized and it’s ordered and it’s proper,” Milliron said, “and that’s what makes it a really wonderful form of communication, so I’d recommend it.”
