After capturing second place at the Notre Dame High School Earlybird Parliamentary Tournament last month, O’Dowd public forum and parliamentary debaters traveled to California State University Long Beach over the weekend, joining nearly 1,500 students from 123 high schools spanning eight states, at the Jack Howe Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament.
By the end of two days of intense debate competitions in parliamentary and public forum formats, O’Dowd debaters earned these notable achievements:
Second place finish in Varsity Parliamentary Debate (68 teams in the division): Claudia Hester & Alden O’Rafferty
Tenth place speaker ranking in Varsity Parliamentary out of 136 speakers: Claudia Hester
Ninth place finish in Varsity Parliamentary Debate: Connor Whitehill & Neha Gupta
Tie for fifth place finish in Novice Public Forum Debate (58 teams in the division): Cas Grafagna & Logan Brockbank; Anna Mette & Evian Jiang
Ninth place finish in Novice Public Forum Debate: Isabella Ibarra & Robert Thomas
Winning records for elimination rounds but missing the cut on tiebreaking points: Sanah Basrai & Maya Perkins and McKenzie Taffe & Meade Jacobsen
The debaters are now focusing on these upcoming events:
October 7-8 – parliamentary and public forum debaters @ O’Dowd and Santa Rosa High School
October 14-15 – parliamentary debaters @ UC Berkeley
October 27-29 – parliamentary and public forum debaters @ University of the Pacific in Stockton
In November, the O’Dowd debaters will participate in debate events at both Santa Clara University and UC Berkeley.
In 2018, the public forum debaters will travel to Arizona State University for the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication Invitational Tournament in Tempe, Arizona.
We wish these students well as they debate such important issues as the North Korean crisis, global warming, gun control, completion of a bullet train in California, renewable energy sources, presidential politics, refugee crisis in Myanmar, and so much more.