MOUNT VERNON — Five hundred students and dozens of parents, volunteers and coaches darted around the Mount Vernon High School cafeteria and library Friday afternoon, anticipating the beginning of the largest speech and debate tournament in Washington state.
Parents and coaches prepared to judge events, while teenagers nervously paced the halls. At the Mount Vernon Invitational, students from high schools across the state would compete in a range of speech and debate events Friday through Sunday, Jan. 12–14.
Kelley Kirkpatrick, the tournament organizer, said they were initially expecting more than 700 students, but some schools pulled out at the last minute due to extreme cold and snow. They still ended up with around 500 youth.
Speech and debate students say the activity provides great community, and hones the lifelong skills of research and public speaking.
Marisa Mendoza, a sophomore at Mount Vernon High School, does both speech and debate events. She said the Mount Vernon High School Debate Team is like a family, and she likes the competitive element of the activity.
“It’s a great way to practice your public speaking, and that’s something I wasn’t so good at,” she said. “It’s helped me a lot.”
Mendoza would like to pursue law, and said debate will help prepare her for defending her clients one day.
Natalie Holland, a senior at Mount Vernon High School, said speech and debate has helped with her research skills. She hopes to study a STEM subject in university, but thinks that speech and debate provides useful skills to people of any discipline.
Holland and Mendoza both helped plan and run the tournament.
“We’ve planned out a lot of activities. We had a lot of fun making posters covered in glitter, and making it so it’s a fun time for everyone who comes to the tournament,” Holland said.
Ruby Simon, a freshman at Sehome High School who is part of the Bellingham United Speech and Debate Team, competed in a Lincoln-Douglas debate, a one-on-one format about a specific issue usually related to morality, justice and democracy, on Friday afternoon. She said debating has improved her persuasive skills.
Kirkpatrick said speech and debate is a “transformative activity” that allows students to highly achieve. She is also the debate coach for Mount Vernon High School and the Washington State Forensics Association President.
“The bar is set so high that everyone’s always striving to be better,” Kirkpatrick said. “Even those academically gifted [students] are going to be challenged in this activity, but there’s also room for the kid who comes in who’s a struggling student.”
“Schools, to me, should all have a speech and debate class,” she added.
Prabhat Aluri, the head coach of the Newport High School Speech and Debate Team in Bellevue, participated in speech and debate in high school. Aluri, who recently graduated from the University of Washington, has volunteered as an assistant coach, and now as a coach — even scheduling his college classes around speech and debate commitments.
Aluri said he’s dedicated so much time to supporting the activity because it makes teenagers better communicators and more empathetic. Speech and debate also allows students to interact with people all over the state and explore topic areas they wouldn’t otherwise, he said.
Kirkpatrick said the community of speech and debate in Washington is incredibly loving, supportive and close-knit.
“A lot of the reasons why these kids are beating the odds is because they’re involved in speech and debate,” she said.
