Speech, Debate takes win in qualifying meet
Townsend, Young flourish in Pflugerville
The first place award Brianna Townsend was presented with after the competition now has a home next to another trophy in Mr.Hunt’s room. Last year Speech and Debate had won a third place sweepstakes trophy at the Eastview tournament.
October 14, 2015
The Speech & Debate Team competed against 28 other schools from across the state in the Pflugerville Texas Forensic Association State Qualifying Speech & Debate Meet on September 25-26 and won multiple awards. Junior captain Brianna Townsend won the 1st Place Top Speaker Award in Varsity Lincoln-Douglass Debate, and junior Ethan Young went undefeated in preliminary rounds and advanced to Quarterfinals in Novice Lincoln-Douglass Debate.
“The debate club is designed for students to learn about academic debate and the different competitions and then we learn about the concepts of the classroom and then we go out and apply these skills to competition,” speech and debate teacher Terry Hunt said.
On Friday and Saturday morning, they competed in Lincoln-Douglass and proceeded on to Saturday evening to compete in original oratory and extemporaneous speaking. Townsend won with a total of 117.5 speaker points and a final score of 2-2 win-loss in Varsity Lincoln-Douglass while Young advanced to the Quarterfinals in Novice Lincoln-Douglass with 111.5 points and a 3-1 win-loss.
“I was really happy because it was a very tough tournament and they were judging pretty hard,” Townsend said. “To get top speaker, I had only lost two points out of all of my rounds so I was really impressed with myself.”
The team is led by many captains to fit into various competition categories including junior team captain Brianna Townsend, senior Lincoln-Douglass captain Gage Spencer, junior Extemporaneous Speaking captain Nathan Young, junior Policy Debate/ Congress captain Haylee Reagan-Bonnet and junior Public Relations captain Lizee Miller. The next tournament will be on October 17 at Judson High School in San Antonio.
“I’m excited that we’re going to have a good group of students attending and to get the board moving and get through competition because I think they learn so much when they get out of Leander High School and compete with students from other parts of the state,” Hunt said. “So I’m very excited about the opportunity to do this and to have everyone ready to go and ready for the school year.”
