At Fremont High School, we have our own debate team who are good at what they do. The debate team has been building for the past few years, but in 2022, and 2023 they have been making moves.
In just a couple of years, the debate team has won multiple trophies and has gone to multiple competitions. Since the past year, the teacher Mr. Mildon, has assigned class leaders to help guide the class and smooth out the process.These leaders help out their peers to be better at their chosen type of debate.
In these competitions, there are different types of debates they can do, ranging from impromptu, in which the students are given a topic and have to come up with a speech against or for that topic with little preparation time, to Oratory, where you must write an original speech that has to be up to 10 minutes long and then memorize it and present it to a crowded room.
The 4 class leaders are Hannah Roper, Sarayh Konecny, Kaylin Manning, and Amara Drakos. With being a class leader there comes responsibility. All the class leaders don’t find it that difficult to manage their respective debate type, but it is a little time consuming. They have to make sure that everyone is on task and that each team member has whatever they need. Most of the day in class is spent preparing for the next competition, and these class leaders have their hands full with having to make sure the people doing the same debate category are prepared, along with keeping up with their work.
Debate isn’t just some class where you go and just argue all day about random topics. Debate can help out with social anxiety, public speaking, and confidence in general, because they have to go in front of a judge and an audience and then present whatever they have ready.. Taking this class also looks really good on your college resume.
They try to go to at least one competition a quarter, even though more times than not it ends up being more than one. These competitions are held at other high schools and are usually either in the mornings during the weekend, or later in the afternoon on school days. There are hundreds of high schoolers who come to these competitions, and most of the time they are friendly and supportive. People often make friends from other schools from these competitions because everyone is so nice. It is common to see people who were in the same room or debate who end up just getting along.
The debate team has been going strong, and are not planning to stop any time soon. They seem to have a promising future in the regionals and state competitions, wish them luck!
