Hillsdale College debaters sophomores Harris Wells and Lauren Holt won the Michigan Lincoln-Douglas championship title this weekend, in a comprehensive sweep of the tournament.
From top novice, to debate sweepstakes, and top speaker awards, Wells and Holt dominated the State of Michigan Championship Tournament hosted by Eastern Michigan University.
“We competed against schools that were much bigger: the University of Michigan, Central Michigan University, and Eastern Michigan University were all there and we won everything,” said debate coach Matthew Doggett, assistant professor of speech.
Holt won open L-D debate and was awarded top speaker.
“Technically speaking, I am now the best debater in the state, but I think that title belongs to our manager Stephen Davis, who was unable to attend the tournament,” Holt said.
Wells won the best novice award in only his second L-D tournament.
The duo also won the open parliamentary round in their first debate as partners.
“We worked really well together as a team in round. The adrenaline rush coming out of debate is always great, and it’s fun being able to see how well our team worked with our great scores,” Wells said.
“Even though this was the first time they had competed together and most of the other teams were very experienced, listening to the rounds, our team clearly won; there were three judges and they won 3-0,” said Doggett.
The team also won debate sweepstakes, which means they were the team that achieved the highest points throughout the entire tournament.
“I didn’t think our team had a chance to win the sweepstakes, given that we only had two people,” Doggett said. “So it was a pretty amazing feat for them to win it.”
“There’s no way we could have won the sweepstakes if Harris had not achieved second speaker in open parliamentary and if I had not won first speaker in Lincoln-Douglas,” Holt said. “I think the most exciting part of the weekend is that Harris got the confidence boost that he needed to realize that he has potential to be extremely good.”
The team looks forward to the Pi Kappa Delta tournament coming up this weekend. Pi Kappa Delta is the national forensics honorary that the team belongs to.
“We have won sweepstakes at Pi Kappa Delta for two years running, so we are really excited,” Holt said.
