By Jahlil Howard/Delta Staff Writer

The debate season is underway with big competitions ahead. The team had top placers in its first competition with JV National Parliamentary Debate 4^th place speaker Cuauhtemoc Olvera and 1^st place winner’s overall JV National Parliamentary Debate Sha Wilson and Cuauhtemoc Olvera.

As they prepared for their match today at Park University in Kansas City today, Debate Coach David Bowers said the team has had regular practices in Baity Hall.

“Competitions are taking place in Baity and usually consist of four to six rounds of competition and breaks to elimination rounds,” he said. “Last weekend, we competed at Lincoln Douglass, which is one-on-one, which requires a lot of research, there’s NPDA and IPDA”

He and the team are prepped and ready for today’s event at Park University. Bowers said recent recruits are making themselves at home on the team.

“They’ve come in and adjusted super well to the college life and competition really quickly,” he said.

Team captain, Junior Eva Agcaoili, took 2^nd Place Overall in Open International Parliamentary Debate the first competition and is ready to lead the team to victory.

“At practice, the team works together to prepare cases for released debate topics,” Agcaoili said. “We discuss potential arguments and answers to them. We hold practice rounds where members of the team debate each other on opposing sides. This helps prepare us to think on our feet and answer questions and arguments we may not have thought of in our initial planning process.”

Agcaoili said she knows the preparation pays off to help analyze more effectively in each match.

“Practice debates and the preparation of arguments before tournaments pays off immensely,” she said. “We know our cases better and therefore, we can answer our opponents questions easier and with more depth. It’s important to know your case better than anyone else and be able to organize your thoughts into effective speeches. This is all practiced during team meetings.”

One of the most important things the Agcaoili knows is that research, research, research is important for thing to prepare for the next competition. “We will continue to do practice debates and research more topics. A lot of debate is understanding the topic and what potential arguments are. We will spend a lot of time researching and planning answers to other potential arguments in the next week. We will continue to test these arguments and cases in practice debates during team practice. A lot of work is done outside of practice as well. Team members get together to research more to be ready for all possible arguments against our prepared cases.”

Along with having a little mix of freshman and upper classmen, sounds that the newcomers have made great adjustments to get on board quickly, By a one confident Freshman who’s seems she’s born ready for competition, 1^st place Overall JV National Parliamentary Debate winner, Sha Wilson from Snyder, TX. “I feel the first tournament wasn’t bad, although it wasn’t what I thought it would be, as I was super nervous the entire day beforehand. Moving forward, I’m going to work on being calmer and planning my speeches a little better.”

The debate team compete today at Park University in Kansas City.