South Debate Team KDC & Novice State Results

Francisco Guardado and Lillian Ardis

Debate is a competition of speaking, but also the mind. A team of two debaters, debate over a resolution. This years resolution is, Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its protection of water resources in the United States. The affirmative is in favor of upholding this resolution while the negative negates the resolution. The affirmative and negative debate each other and rounds typically last an hour-and-thirty minutes. On January 4th and 5th three Salina South Debate teams competed at very competitive tournaments holding very skilled debaters across the state of Kansas.

At Novice State, in Lawrence at Lawrence High School, the best Novice (first year) teams in the state debated to see who’s the best of the best. Freshman from Salina South Debate did not break into out-rounds, but put an amazing effort. Freshman Elizabeth Lovett placed 11th speaker out of 116 competitors. Speaker placements are based off how well the competitor debated and spoke. The Kansas Debate Classic at Lawrence Free State in Lawrence follow the same format, but contains the best Varsity debaters out of the entire state of Kansas. In KDC, senior Seth Carter and junior Ava Williamson put an amazing effort and placed first, only losing one round.

On January 14th and 15th Salina South Debate will take two teams to 5A 2-Speaker state debate and two teams to 5A 4-speaker state debate.  The two speaker teams include; senior Seth Carter and junior Ava Williamson, and sophomores Lillian Ardis and Nardacelia Garcia. The team debating on the affirmative for the 5A-State 4 Speaker team will freshman Grady Smith and Kaisen Snow. The negative team will be junior Francisco Guardado and sophomore Soren Mannabech. All these teams worked hard to qualify. Earlier in the season the 4-Speaker team placed 3rd at regionals on a 8-3 (won 8 rounds and lost 3) record qualifying to state.