Two of the four debate events at Chesterton High School started their season in Iowa City this past weekend. The team took part of its Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum teams out of state to see some national level competition.

In Lincoln Douglas Debate, a group consisting of juniors Megan Adamczewski, Dan Leopold, Alec Turner, and Haley Trezzo as well as sophomores Corrine O’Brien; represented Chesterton High School. Corrine O’Brien advanced out of the preliminary rounds and finished as an Octafinalist at the tournament. O’Brien was also the tournment’s third best speaker in the event. Coach Scott Woodhouse was pleased with his team’s effort stating that “the style in Iowa is extremely different than here in Indiana, but my kids worked well together and learned both what to do and what not to do.”

In Public Forum debate, all four teams advanced out of the preliminary rounds to compete in elimination rounds. Tyler Fabbri and Syed Shah were the fifth seed in the tournament but were defeated by their own teammates Alec Donaldson and Dakota McCoy who made it all the way to quarterfinals. Also advancing into Quarterfinals were the team of Jordan Hoover and Adam Potrzebowski.

The team advancing the furthest was Spencer Hadley and Luke Morgan. Starting the elimination part of the tournament as the second overall seed, they advanced all the way to semi-finals and finished the tournament in third place overall. The team also had three of the top five Speakers awards at the tournament with Hoover fifth, Hadley, third, and Luke Morgan as the tournament’s number one speaker.

The entire debate team will compete together starting next week at a tournament in Kokomo.

CHS at LaPorte Congress debate tournament

In a small tournament limited to northwest Indiana schools and limited to one debate event, Congressional Debate, CHS debaters took home some ribbons.

In the varsity Senate Tristen Comegys took fifth out of 24 and Kailey Paglia took sixth. In the JV House Michelle Wyatt took second. In the novice House A Tate Paglia took third.

Posted 10/13/2008