On Sunday, January 19, the Choate Debate Team hosted and participated in the annual Choate Invitational Debate Tournament. Twenty schools attended the tournament, all of which are part of the Debating Association of New England Independent Schools (DANEIS). Choate dominated in the Novice division of the tournament. Ryan Kim ’23 won best speaker with a total of 263 points and Xavier Shattuck ’21, Erik Ely ’22, Campbell Pflaume ’23, and Okasha Bari ’21 got second place as a four-person team.
Kim said, “I didn’t expect to win, but it feels great. We had a hybrid team, so it’s really a testament to show how even if you don’t know each other, debate helps bring people together.” Kim’s situation was unique. Because Brunswick came to the tournament with a couple of people short, Kim stepped in and debated with their team. Despite never having met his partner before, the tournament was a huge success.
The tournament took a lot of preparation. Kenadi Waymire ’22, Will Flamm ’21, Jack Miley ’20, Mr. Neil Shimmield, and Ms. Kyra Jenny were central to the organization and running of the tournament. They were responsible for communicating with the other schools in the DANEIS league, finding “runners” –– volunteers who collected the score ballots from each room, developing debate resolutions, and determining a schedule for the day. Flamm, referring to a shortage of runners that made some people in the tab room responsible for scoring and collecting ballots from each room, said, “Everyone worked really well together, despite some unexpected surprises.”
The tournament consisted of three rounds of parliamentary extemporaneous debate. In this type of debate, the topic is announced at the start of each round, and the teams are allotted 10 minutes of preparation before the debate begins, forcing debaters to think on their feet and create logical narratives. The topics debated can range from being policy-oriented to being very nuanced and silly. The debates are judged based on public speaking and the persuasiveness of arguments.
The Choate Invitational is one of the final tournaments of this school year. Reflecting on the season as it draws to a close, Captain Maya Lewis-Hayre ’20 said that debaters “worked really hard and improved a lot throughout the year.” The debate team has had a wide range of accomplishments this season, from dominating at the Loomis Chaffee Invitational to qualifying two people for the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championship (WIDPSC), which will take place in Shanghai, China on April 8. Will Greve ’20, Vice President of the Debate Team, and Conor Brown ’22 will represent the School at Worlds. Although Brown only started debating at Choate last year, this is his second qualification for Worlds.
The international tournament is split into four events: interpretive reading, impromptu speaking, parliamentary debate, and after-dinner or persuasive speaking. Brown is “concentrating most of his energy on parliamentary debate.” Although he specializes in one event, Brown and other competitors will be competing in all of them and will be scored individually in each one. The competitor who receives the highest scores is crowned the World Champion.
Brown entered Choate with his perception of debate as “harsh” and “scientific,” but he quickly realized that Choate’s debate team values a sense of community and treats debate as “passing an oral tradition down to new debaters, rather than maintaining a very hierarchical system.” He is grateful to have the opportunity to attend tournaments, both in New England and now internationally, with the team.
Choate Debate has had a really fulfilling season, from practices to tournaments. Lewis-Hayre said, “Everyone who comes to meetings, particularly our newer members, have made a sincere and industrious effort to improve their skills and to adjust their debating according to our feedback. My and the vice captain’s primary goal when we were elected was to cultivate a love for debate in the entire team, and even if the debaters are perhaps more responsible for it than us, I think we are all really excited to see that goal realized.”
