http://www.yankton.net/articles/2013/02/28/community/doc512edc01e1c00346624807.txt

Yankton Hosting State Debate Meet

By Andrew Atwal
andrew.atwal@yankton.net

Schools from around the state will be traveling to Yankton on Friday and Saturday to participate in the South Dakota State Debate Tournament, being held at Yankton High School (YHS).

There will be approximately 18 schools in Yankton for the tournament, including most AA schools with a debate team, and some A schools, such as Vermillion,  Harrisburg and Spearfish.

Local preparations for the tournament began around Jan. 1 with coordinators getting in touch with people to help with things needed for judges and making sure all rooms and backup rooms were read for the event.

The tournament will have several categories, including the group debate categories of policy, Lincoln-Douglas and the public forum debate. The individual events include original oratory, international extemporaneous and United States extemporaneous.

“The policy debate is an issue of policy. This year, students will debate whether the federal government should increase its investment in transportation infrastructure,” said Leo Kallis, YHS’ debate team coach. “Students have the resolution and work on it all year.”

The policy debate is the longest of the three group categories, lasting about 90 minutes.

The public forum debate is shorter, and is designed for a more current event or hot-button issue. Students go through a different resolution each month and, during the tournament, they will debate how the rise of China could be beneficial to the United States. The public forum debate lasts about 30 minutes, with each speaker getting six minutes to talk.
The Lincoln-Douglas debate pertains to resolutions of value. During the debate tournament, students in this category will argue about the idea of rehabilitation being preferable to retribution in the United States criminal justice system. The Lincoln-Douglas debate round lasts about 45 minutes.

“A three-judge panel determines the winning team in each round,” Kallis said. “The policy and Lincoln-Douglas debates are judged primarily by coaches and former debaters, while the public forum debate is judged by community members and is designed for a community audience.”

During the first few rounds, judges will eliminate each team with two losses, and then try to eliminate additional teams by the end of round four of the contest. The quarterfinal, semi-final and final rounds are all single elimination.

During the single elimination rounds, each judge will provide a reason for picking a school on their ballot. Ballots will also feature a 30-point scoring system.

“Each team is guaranteed three rounds of debate,” Kallis said. “We will start everything Friday morning, and hope to be done Saturday evening around 6 p.m.”

He added that kids want to do well in the state tournament, and have spent their last two weeks at national qualifying tournaments preparing for this event.

In addition to benefits for the kids in the competition, Kallis notes that the tournament brings a lot of positives to Yankton as well.

“The community, as a whole, will benefit from the teams staying in hotels in town and eating in Yankton’s restaurants,” he said. “I think community members should know that there are extracurricular activities out there other than sports, where students apply what they learn in class to a competitive environment.”

Kallis said, as an educator, he enjoys seeing kids extend what they learn from the classroom into the debate team.

The YHS team has a good history of competing in the group debate events, but Kallis said they can always get better in the individual  tournament events.

Winners are picked for each category of event, as well as each class of school. Schools are limited to two entrants per event.

Kallis said he hopes students see their hard work pay off in this weekend’s tournament.

“I hope students get the sense of accomplishment in the tournament because they’ve worked hard all season and they’ll be able to show the results of their work one last time,” he said. “I hope they win, but we just ask them to work hard to prepare and do the best they can in every round. I hope the students continue to do that.”

You can follow Andrew Atwal on Twitter at twitter.com/andrewatwal