The student news site of Clayton High School.

The Globe

The student news site of Clayton High School.

The Globe

The student news site of Clayton High School.

The Globe

Clayton Fall Classic Speech and Debate Tournament

Student organize the Star Wars-themed CHS Speech and Debate tournament

Students from all around Missouri swarmed the CHS commons and Gym on Nov. 18 and 19 as CHS hosted the 21st annual Clayton Fall Classic Speech and Debate Invitational.

A Speech and Debate tournament is a congregation of many of the Speech and Debate teams in Missouri to compete in eight events and three debates ranging from poetry reading to public forum debate amounting to a total of 414 individual rounds.

Although the tournament may not have begun until 3:00 p.m. Friday, the preparation for this large tournament has been going on for months.

According to Justin Seiwell, the Speech and Debate coach at CHS, “The students and I put in about 35 hours each over the two days of the tournament.  Leading up to it, we spent a day together last [the Saturday before the tournament] Saturday preparing, and then were in the building every day the week of the tournament until about 8:00 p.m.”

The preparation for this event included recruiting 536 judges, making signs and schedules, training everybody for their job, printing ballots, and many other tasks.

On top of managing all of events, the CHS Speech and Debate team members, parents, coaches, and friends had to manage a hospitality room, a concession stand and keeping the corridors quiet.

The CHS students may not have competed at this tournament out of tradition and courtesy, but their was obviously plenty of stress.

“What caused the most stress for me was finding out that some room couldn’t start because all its judges weren’t there. There were a few judges who just never came, and I, along with Ellie Gund and Dee Luo, had to find someone who could replace them. We were also under a time constraint because we couldn’t allow the rounds to start too far behind schedule, or both judges and competitors would begin to complain” said senior Corrine Yap, co-president of the Speech and Debate Club. “We had to maintain a very delicate balance.”

Despite the stress, the invitational was a true success, “Not only were the visiting schools very complimentary, so were our judge volunteers,” said Seiwell.  “We already have schools and judges giving us firm commitments to return next year.”

However, there is always room for improvement according to Yap, “I would try to organize more community outreach. Although we had an astounding amount of people volunteer to be judges, at times, it wasn’t enough. I think if the team was more motivated from the start to recruit adults to judge, the stress levels of the team as a whole would decrease immensely.”

The tournament may have been coordinated by Seiwell, but the students were the ones that really ran this tournament. “I’m just the guy with the keys,” said Seiwell.

While the tournament was a lot of hard work, according to Seiwell, the most important factor was bringing the team closer together. “More importantly, I really feel like the team bonded over this experience, which is, to me, the whole point of hosting something so complicated.


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Clayton Fall Classic Speech and Debate Tournament