By Robbie Gamble
On Friday, December 4th, the Garnet Valley High School Speech & Debate team celebrated an incredible success at their inaugural in-house tournament! There were around fifty total participants—including competitors, judges, and spectators—in attendance at the event.
Since the quarantine began, nearly all schools in the region have shut down their Speech & Debate teams due to a lack of attendance or have been limited to only a handful of events. However, the GVHS Speech & Debate team has yet to skip a beat. With the introduction of the team website and membership with the National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA), our school’s team has been able to transition effortlessly into an online platform. After these initial few months of practice and preparation, the team was beginning to crave the excitement of a “real” tournament. As such, the officers devised a plan to host an in-house tournament amongst its members. The tournament would serve as preparation to see if the team could host a Pennsylvania High School Speech League (PHSSL) tournament for other schools in the region.
Last Friday’s three-round tournament ran from 3:30 PM to 7:00 PM and concluded with an awards ceremony for the night’s most outstanding speakers and debaters! The team was especially happy to have been able to integrate the new middle school speakers and debaters into the competition, two of whom won an award for first and second place! After the truly outstanding success of the tournament, the team looks forward to hosting future in-house competitions and is optimistic about its potential to arrange competitions with other Speech & Debate teams in the region. This team is definitely one to watch in the upcoming months!
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