Speech and Debate ends season strong

By Jessica Lukrich and
Kalyn Nakano
Staff Writers

In the famous words of Jerry Seinfeld, “People’s number one fear is public speaking; number two is death … This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” It might thus come as a surprise to discover that a group of students at the school does public speaking for fun and that they do it quite well.
The team, combined of LAHS and Mountain View High School (MVHS) students, has excelled in both speaking and debating events this year, with a number of students advancing to elimination rounds in tournaments and qualifying for upper-level competitions.
“The team’s doing great,” junior Dan Meierkort said. “We’ve got a lot of new members and many returning varsity members, and our team this year is really strong.”
This past month, some team members qualified for and participated in the Tournament of Champions (TOC), a national competition between the top students nationwide. Senior Chris Galdamez and junior Mason Satterwhite both took high positions in Congress, while seniors Jing Wang and Daniel Moerner did well in Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate, with Daniel placing second in the tournament.
Although the team performed strongly across all events, the team has done particularly well in the LD debate event, claiming victory in every single tournament in California that counts in the national circuit.
Some of these tournaments include the Stanford Invitational, the Berkeley Invitational and the Southern California Championships; Daniel won both the Stanford and Berkeley Invitationals.
“As far as we know it’s the first time someone has ever won both Stanford and Berkeley,” Daniel said.
One of the factors attributed to the team’s performance is the strength of this year’s Senior Class. Although the team will lose many seniors next year, many members still have high hopes.
“I still expect the team to do very well next year,” Dan said. “Most of our members in speech events are juniors or younger, so we’ll still be very strong in that sense. As for debate, we’ve got a lot of freshmen this year waiting to take the seniors’ place, and they’re very good too.”
The team also looks forward to honing its skills through additional experience next year.
“Next year will be a year of education and trying new things,” freshman Adron Mason said. “Our team is planning to do a lot of traveling … It should be fun getting more experience.”
Though the busiest months of the season have now ended, the team continues to meet to practice and discuss topics every Wednesday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at MVHS.
“People have this fear of public speaking, and Speech and Debate team is the most effective device we have to combat that,” junior Patrick Sheehan said. “Speech and Debate team has improved my ability to communicate with others and persuade them to my point of view, and I think that’s one of the most valuable skills one can attain.”