This past weekend the Palisade Speech and Debate team hosted the first home tournament competing with various teams resulting in a few exciting wins. Kiera Stephen, a senior at Palisade High School competed this past weekend and shared her pride and joy regarding the team and her own successes. Stephen explains, “I thought the tournament went really well, for me personally I got first in poetry which is my main event. For the team overall it was pretty successful as well. Our world’s team, which is a form of debate, took first place so that was pretty cool. “We had two of our LD debaters place really well which is great and overall it was very successful.” Speech and debate have three main branches: debate, speech, and interpretation. Due to the Palisade team expansion in the last few years, they have a general captain overall, Annika Walla, a public forum captain, a congress captain, a debate captain, an LD captain, a speech captain, and an interp. captain. Stephens is an interp. captain which is an event that focuses more on the arts including poetry, drama, humorous interpretation, duo interpretation, and much more. Stephens has been participating in Speech and Debates since her Sophomore year alongside her Freshmen sister. Stephen states, “I’m really grateful my sister encouraged me to do it because this team has become like a family. I just really enjoy the community and there are just so many different kinds of people and I don’t think I’ve ever met a more interesting group of people. It’s also really cool to form connections with people all over the state and make friends with people you are competing against.” Stephens explains her love for the team and emphasizes, “Tournaments are super fun because we all wake up at four in the morning and we all get to see each other at our worst and we’re still just so close. It’s just so fun, all of it.” The team heads to Delta on Saturday for their next tournament. This season has started off strong and exciting. The team is hopeful to take these momentous wins to continue to compete at the high level they are capable of. We wish you the best of luck in Delta.