By Charly Buchanan

Reporter

Five members of the Blue Springs South debate team have qualified for the national tournament held in Salt Lake City, Utah.

This summer, Kirsten Pryde, Cooper Giles, Allissa Patton, Joe Swingle and Adam Ryan will be competing for national titles. They qualified at the National Forensics League District tournament. Senior Kirsten Pryde and junior Cooper Giles won first place in Policy debate to earn their spot at the National tournament. Policy debate is conducted with a partner and takes nearly an hour and a half per round. During that time, a certain resolution is debated and whether or not a policy act should support that resolution or be denied, while the judge acts as a congressman. Pryde explained what it was like to qualify.

“It was definitely a surprise to me. I didn’t think we were going to do it. We didn’t have the best season. We went 2-2 a lot, so to go 7-0 at a tournament was surprising,” Pryde said.

Other qualifiers, sophomore Adam Ryan and senior Joe Swingle, took fourth place in Public Forum Debate and competed against 52 teams. In this category of debate, the participants prepare a new topic each month. This month, their resolution was that the United States military should formally withdraw from Okinawa. They were given a month to prepare, which involved writing out their cases, prepping the blocks to the other side’s arguments, and extensive research. Ryan explained what it’s like to work with a partner.

“Joe is an interesting character. We work quite well together overall. Obviously with our outcome we’re happy with what happened. The way that we work is kind of different and it impacts the judges differently. We have contrasting styles of debate- mine is very line by line and his is very off the top, so depending on the judge sometimes I’ll get the higher speaker ranking and sometimes he will. So the combination of styles actually really helps us,” Ryan said.

For Swingle, qualifying for nationals represented all of his hard work paying off.

“It was honestly an amazing experience, I’ve worked so hard for four years to achieve this, and I’m really excited my dream has been accomplished,” Swingle said.

Senior Allissa Patton took second place in Lincoln-Douglas debate, earning her a spot at the National tournament. During a Lincoln-Douglas debate students decide whether or not to support a certain philosophy and try to convince judges of their position. Patton attributes her success to hard work.

“I did not sleep. I spent hours on the computer every single day and would stay up until like two in the morning collecting evidence,” Patton said.

To prepare for Nationals these qualifiers will do extensive research and work with college debaters as well as debate coach Kelli Morrill to prepare their arguments.

The debate team finished first overall at districts. Morrill explained the excitement surrounding this event.

“It felt incredible because we have not won first place since 2005, so it was about time that we were able to pull together as a team and win. It was also exciting to have one in each event of the debates and the public speaking qualify for nationals because a lot of times this is very hard to do because coaches will focus in on just one type of debate. This shows depth in our squad,” Morrill said.