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Iris Cessna

The trophy case fills with trophies from the debate and forensics team

Students from the debate and forensics team participated in the Shenandoah Valley Forensics League tournament on Thursday, Nov. 11 with schools around the Shenandoah Valley. When it comes down to explaining the difference between debate and forensics, debate is more of an argumentative talk supporting an affirmative and negative, while forensics is competitive performance and public speaking. Librarian Bradley Walton is one of the coaches for the forensics team and has been helping to prepare for their second tournament.

“Tonight is a tournament that is being put on by the Shenandoah Valley Forensics League, which is a formal forensics league that has been assembled by a number of schools in the area and actually somewhat beyond the area,” Walton said.

With that being said, the league is run by coaches and is not affiliated by any Virginia high school leagues, catholic forensics leagues or any other organization. This tournament will allow students in both the forensics and the debate team to experience how it feels to compete and also to prepare for how it will feel at a Virginia high school league competition.

Schools around the Valley competed in this particular forensics league which included James Wood, Spotswood, Buffalo Gap, Broadway and more.

With the first meeting beginning at 5:30p.m., students and coaches were on their way to separate classrooms in the school to begin their debate or public speaking. The Shenandoah Valley Forensics League will mark the second tournament off for the HHS forensics and debate team. Based off their first debate, Walton believed the team could’ve done a little better and should be able to improve at this second one.

“It went okay. It was the first tournament of the year; those are always getting the rust brushed off. For the forensics team, Andrew Ansah from Harrisonburg did really well in the category of original oratory, he came in first [out of] about 18 people,”

To prepare for most tournaments such as these, students on the forensics team will usually practice once a week with their coaches and schedule other practice times either before or after school or during lunch. Students will perform their pieces in front of their coaches while being critiqued.

The Habitat for Humanity Club also helped with the tournament by making and serving cookies and hot dogs for the night.

With forensics students all over the place during the competition, students from the debate team joined along. Senior Ali Al-Shebani has been debating for four years and participated in the tournament.

“I usually get really nervous about it, but now it’s really nothing,” Al-Shebani said.

Sophomore Elisavet Savides is also a part of the debate team.

“I really like my topic. We have it for two months, and it’s really interesting, and it has to do with a lot of current events we have going on right now,” Savides said.

Although students on the forensics team have been practicing with their coaches, Walton believes HHS will come out of this tournament with similar results as other schools.

“I think some of the people on the Harrisonburg team are extremely good, but I think some of the people on the other teams are extremely good as well,” Walton said.