The speech and debate team will compete in a Texas Forensics Association (TFA) swing tournament at Flower Mound Jan. 31 – Feb. 1.
Both speech and debate competitions will be held over the weekend for students to potentially win scholarship money from TFA, as well as points needed to advance to the state tournament.
“[The competition] is super competitive [right now,]” vice president Neena George said. “Hebron is still working its way up, but we’re also yielding a lot of progress.”
Speech and debate has been competing in tournaments on the weekends throughout the year and started its spring season. Seven students won tournaments and 24 have placed in finals.
“We’re a pretty high [performing] school because we’ve been doing really well this year,” co-president Ally Gladson said. “A bunch of our students have been advancing and winning tournaments, so we stand a pretty good chance of getting sweepstakes at this tournament.”
Students competing in competitions either give speeches on written media or express issues through political arguments before being judged by a panel. Teams of students are eliminated each round until one remains.
“You paint a story and have an underlying message that’s supposed to inspire [or] create change,” co-president Shawn Chatha said.
To advance to the TFA state competition on March 9, competitors need 12 points that can be earned through placing in finals at tournaments. So far, nine students have enough points to qualify for the state competition, including Chatha.
“[So many schools] are coming in [to this tournament] because there’s more at stake,” Chatha said. “Since there’s two tournaments, if you do bad in one, you have to do really good in the other one. If you do good in both, that’s even more state points [for qualifications.]”
The speech and debate teams have been practicing interpretations and routines after school every Tuesday and Wednesday leading up to the events. The team is prioritizing out-of-school bonding activities, which Gladson said has helped the team’s dynamic.
“We’ve improved a lot on becoming more of a family [this year,]” Gladson said. “We’ve been bonding a lot as a team, and [have] been doing a lot better in tournaments. We’re using our time wisely, and overall, our performance has increased.”