Over spring break, 22 Hillsdale students competed in a national speech and debate tournament hosted at Ohio University.
Hillsdale has a comprehensive debate program, so students competed across multiple genres of speech as well as multiple formats of debate. Hillsdale finished ninth in Individual Team Sweepstakes and second in Debate Sweepstakes. In Combined Sweepstakes, Hillsdale finished with a tie for seventh place.
Matthew Warner, assistant director of debate and forensics, said the competition was grueling. The first day of the tournament was cancelled due to a snowstorm that closed Ohio University’s campus. Due to the cancellation, the remaining three days included four days’ worth of competition.
Debate coach Matthew Doggett said the team “succeeded in the unexpected” as the students handled unforeseen pressures very well.
“I thought everyone who competed in debate did something excellent,” Doggett said. “The whole team had to survive a snowstorm and a change to the tournament schedule that put far more pressure on the debaters to do well in fewer rounds.”
Judges gave students scores ranging from “Good” to “Excellent” to “Superior” for each event.
“The team did exceptionally. There were over 80 schools competing, and most individual events had over 100 entries,” Warner said. “Aside from a handful of novice competitors, every Hillsdale student earned at least a Good award in a majority of their events.”
Doggett gave credit to the students who competed in both individual events and debate events.
“What they did was amazing because they all had two debating events plus several individual events, so they were speaking at 8 in the morning until 8 or 9 o’clock at night,” Doggett said.
Senior Ian Fury gave more than 30 speeches in eight different categories over the course of the tournament and earned Excellent scores in virtually every event. Fury said he was most proud of his After Dinner Speech in which he aimed to persuade his audience through humor about the discrimination against conservatives in the competitive speaking circuit.
“I am most proud of this speech because my teammate and I rewrote most of my jokes in the days leading up to the tournament. We rewrote some of the jokes as late as 11 the night before I gave the speech,” Fury said. Fury won two out of three rounds with this speech.
Other key performers in individual events included seniors Brandon Butz and Anna Wunderlich, sophomores Erin Graham and Keyona Shabazz, and freshman Mary Blendermann.
Senior Taylor Wessel and junior Graham Deese placed second in JV Parliamentary Debate. Junior Alex Eaton and freshman Allie Howell placed first and second respectively in Novice Lincoln-Douglas debate.
The two partnered to receive an Excellent score in Novice Parliamentary debate. Freshmen Rachel Behr and Adrienne Carrier partnered to receive an Excellent score in Public Forum debate and placed ninth.
It was Carrier’s first time competing in Public Forum debate, but she has been partnering with Behr since the girls were in high school.
“We have really good experience that way, we knew how each other would function, and we could kind of bounce back and forth off of each other,” Carrier said. “It was an open event so there were seniors competing, not just Novice and JV — so we were really excited about how we placed.”
