Following the Hawke's Bay Regionals Sainsbury Logan & Williams Debating Competition on the 9th and 10th of March, three team members (myself, Anshika Negi and Becs Cadenhead) and two reserves (Yuval Sela and Monet Maugham) were selected to compete at the national competition that was held from the 24th to the 27th of May in Wellington. On the 24th of May, the opening ceremony was held at the Supreme Court, hosted by the NZSDC patron Sir Stephen Kós. Seven debates followed at the Victoria University Law School against 12 other teams from across the country. We won four out of seven debates placing us in contention for breaking into the semi-finals.

After an amazing high-quality debate for the final at Parliament between Auckland Blue and Otago, where Otago won, the prize giving was then held. I was grateful to be named as a reserve on the New Zealand team. The team itself consists of five members: three from Auckland, one from Otago and one from the Bay of Plenty who will be travelling to Prague, Czechia for the Pre-Worlds tournament and Belgrade, Serbia for the Worlds Debating Tournament in July, as well as two non-travelling reserves: myself and another student from Wellington who will be able to take part in some of the training sessions in the lead-up. The selection process involved looking at all of our speeches from throughout the tournament and our speaker scores from those debates.

The competition was an amazing experience. I am very thankful to my teammates for their amazing debating skills and teamwork that made the weekend a fun and successful experience and to my coaches Sam O’Grady, Siobhan Davies and Peter Gedye for their dedication and hard work that went into many practices, seminars and coaching sessions in the weeks before Nationals.

By Isabella McKeefry

Year 12, Havelock North High School

Article added: Thursday 06 June 2024