December 7, the 16th annual CarterKing tournament took place at Midtown High School— one of Atlanta’s incredibly memorable Speech and Debate events. This specific tournament contained 15 events, seven for the speech category and eight for the debate category. NC’s team focused on two events: the impromptu speeches and the public forum debate.
Impromptu speaking explores various aspects of improvisation as participants receive a random prompt, and present a speech on the topic related to their life. The speech must contain an introduction, three main points and a conclusion. The categories of prompts for Midtown consisted of Snowball Fight (One versus Another), Walking in a Winter Wonderland (All Things Winter) and A Christmas Story (Holiday Movies). Participants of the event created a speech with two minutes of preparation and five minutes of presentation. If participants did not meet the standards of an impromptu speech, they did not receive the highest scores. After the round ends, the judges categorize the participants from first place to or fifth or sixth, depending on the number of students who presented.
“After my three rounds, I definitely have a lot of self-reflection to do. I definitely want to review my impromptu skills and get back on the horse. I think I did well on clear, concise points, sometimes I make time, and sometimes I’m confident and I think that helps a lot in my rooms. I should work on speaking slower and breathing because my points can be thought out, but when I go to perform my speech, I’ll just blank. Also, I think our team needs work because a lot of people graduated this year and it has been really overwhelming to get new members who actually attend the events,” magnet sophomore Skye Pierre said.
Pierre, the social media manager for NC’s Speech and Debate team, displayed her skills through the three rounds of competition and scored accordingly. She placed second with 90 points and third with 87 points in her first round, fourth with 86 and 90 points in her second round and second with 90 points and third with 88 points in her third round. She touched on subjects of self-acceptance and shared her truth through her speeches. Meanwhile, freshman Leila Quaynor and Sophia Kruger practiced a heated debate for the first time, as they previously worked on duo interpretation for competitions.
Public forum, a debate category in which two students from NC took part in, allowed students to focus on a current news event to raise awareness and to practice their public speaking on a serious and political topic. In this type of debate, students work in pairs to argue for or against a cause. Kruger and Quaynor began with the topic of the U.S. implementing a wealth tax, but the topic changed during the second half of the tournament to whether the U.S. should withdraw troops from Taiwan. After their success at previous competitions, the two felt confident to argue for their stance.
“[I did] a public forum for this event, and it’s a lot more work than just doing speech like last time. It’s very new and very difficult for me as a freshman, I feel like I have to do more research than last time. We were arguing about whether the US should implement a wealth tax, but we switched and argued about whether the US should withdraw troops from Taiwan. We worked from scratch to develop an argument, I think we did okay,” Kruger said.
Due to a lack of consistent members at tournaments, NC’s Speech and Debate team will not progress to State Championships, as the team would require the perseverance of an intensified quantity of NC students. However, the students who competed at CarterKing provided an exemplary effort to earn their place on the team. With this experience, Speech and Debate members strive to succeed in future events.
