The Bingham Speech and Debate team won their State tournament March 11th and 12th.  After losing to Copper Hills at region, Bingham came back, covering the distance of 26 points in two weeks.  

Debate coach Mike Bausch attributes their win to “the hard work of the team.”  He said, “It was the effort that people put in and those performances that were above expectations that really made the difference.”  Since the beginning of the school year, the debate team has stayed after school many hours a week to work toward this victory.  

At the regional tournament Irelynd Brown, Allie Coats, Brooke Haldeman, Tanner Lertsongkham, Arza Helm, Damon Ngo, Seth Singleton, Emerson Ford, Kaity Noyes, Lille Knudsen, Nikkail Jensen, Yumasie Hellebuick, Mike Miller, John Shackelford, Dillan Stevens, Chandler Ward, and Olivia Whitely all placed in their individual events.  At National Qualifiers, Irelynd Brown, Allie Coats, Chandler Ward, Olivia Whitely, John Shackelford, and Dillan Stevens all qualified to go to Nationals in June.  At the State tournament, Dillan Stevens, John Shackelford, Chandler Ward, Olivia Whitely, Yumasie Hellebuick, Mike Miller, Brooke Haldeman, Tanner Lertsongkham, Emerson Ford, Seth Singleton, Lauren Gleave, Kaity Noyes and Nikail Jensen all placed in their events at state.

There are three debate events and four speech events.  The thing that comes to many people’s minds when they hear “debate” is talking quickly, strong political views, and loads of research.  This is most likely due to the event entitled Policy.  This partner event has the same topic all year and, as a result, goes extremely in depth in its arguments.  The other partner event is Public Forum.  This event changes its resolution (the statement which they are debating) every month.  The speeches are shorter than in policy, but so is the prep time.  The third debate event is Lincoln Douglas.  This event is just one-on-one, and has an emphasis on the morality of issues.  It changes its resolution every two months.  One speech event is Extemporary (“Extemp”).  There are foreign and national extemp.  Extemp has a myriad of options for the topics that are researched, and students find out which one they will be speaking on when they get to their round.  Since it is a speech event, there is no clash, just rankings.  Impromptu is scored similarly; however, there is no heads-up on what the topics will be, and it is generally more lay in nature.  The final speech event (and most likely what one imagines when thinking about speech events) is Oratory.  Oratory speakers get to choose their own topic and prepare the same speech for all year.  It is very contingent on one’s ability to speak well.

Although this is Bausch’s last year, his message to those who may be considering debate is, “The things that you use in college and in the workforce are those rigorous argument skills and speaking and analysis.  Learning those in high school and mastering those skills — or at least working toward mastering those skills — will take you very, very far.”