Last week, Palisade’s Speech and Debate team had their first meeting of the season! The team has grown tremendously in the past year and we can’t wait to see what they accomplish this season. 

Speech and Debate is a rigorous extracurricular that takes a lot of dedication and time, with the season lasting all the way from October to March. Speech and Debate consists of many events, such as Public Forum, which is a duo vs duo debate event, Extemporaneous Speaking, which deals with creating speeches, and Poetry Interpretation, which is when the speaker recites a poem to judges. There really is a spot for everyone on the Speech and Debate team, which is something many people have learned, with the team size almost doubling since last year. The novices who began working at the beginning of the month, are finally ready to show off their skill at the Novice tournament this weekend at Coal Ridge. 

As far as the Varsity team goes, it looks like almost everyone has returned this season, ready for another phenomenal year. Last year they sent almost half the team to Nationals in Arizona, and even more to compete in States in Denver. The Varsity team consists of half a dozen Seniors who will be leaving next year, so they want to make sure they make this one count. I talked to one of those Seniors, Owen Bickham, who said, “I’m definitely looking forward to this season, we have a ginormous team, we get to practice in the library, and I feel like we’ve all come a long way from where we started. It should be a good season.” We know the Speech and Debate team will kill it this year and we can’t wait to see the novice’s progress!