Kinkaid Middle School debaters recently competed at the Seven Lakes tournament.
They were competing at a high school level competition in the beginners division, so most of their opponents were freshmen and sophomores.
The partnership of Collin Lawrence and Sam Segal won the novice public forum debate division, placing first out of 37 teams from 14 schools. They won their final round against Stratford High School in Spring Branch on a 3-0 decision from the judges. They were debating the Voting Rights Act.
Kinkaid had three other teams that made the octofinals (top 16), meaning that Kinkaid had one quarter of the teams that advanced past the preliminary rounds.
These octofinal teams were:
Lauren Ho/Amanda Roff
Remy Kalai/Alexander Treistman
Anish Odhav/Minnhy Truong
In addition, Kinkaid had three students individually recognized in public forum for their speaking. The following students place in the top 10 speakers out of 74 participants:
Sam Segal: 2nd place
Amanda Roff: 5th place
Remy Kalai: 7th place
Finally, Kinkaid also had a handful of students competing in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, an individual event that discussed the topic of environmental protection versus resource extraction in developing countries.
Austin Koort advanced into the octofinals and also earned the 1st place award for best speaking out of 56 students from 18 schools.
Congratulations to these middle school debaters! These are great results for a competition at the high school level.
Kinkaid’s seventh graders are now finished competing for this school year. Kinkaid’s eighth graders have one more competition on the weekend of Feb. 21 & 22, 2014 at Olle Middle School.
-- Stacy Thomas, Middle School Debate Coach, The Kinkaid School