By Jake Navarro

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—Over the break, four students from Silver Creek High School participated in the California National Debate Institute speech and debate tournament at Berkeley.

Anvay Gupte, Tiffany Le, Jacklyn Nguyen and Katelyn Nguyen were on the Berkeley campus participating on behalf of Silver Creek. Scoring high in this tournament wins a bid for the championship in Kentucky at the end of the school year.

The Tournament of Champions happens at the end of the year. Teams are required to have two bids to enter.

Students are assigned a topic that stays the same throughout the whole year so they have time to study it for the debate. After researching, they should be capable of arguing for both sides and are assigned a side right before the debate begins. This is when some groups also decide to draft a new argument if the side they were given doesn’t align with the speech currently planned.

There are two teams, a group of two who do the speech and one person that does the debate. The speech team prepares a statement that is used to persuade and educate a listener or sometimes an audience. The debate side explains their position and then tries to convince a judge through thorough argumentation. In Silver Creek’s case, it was Gupte and K. Nguyen on the speech team and Le and J. Nguyen on the debate side.

Silver Creek’s teams did not make it to the end of the tournament due to a couple of reasons. The selected teams were out of a very skilled set, which means much more preparation is needed and mistakes are punishing. However, Silver Creek’s presence shows the strength of the team.

in the tournament shows the skill level of the speech and debate team. Gupte says, “I wish I could’ve done better, but I’m personally not upset about how I did, I was happy about the opportunity to participate.”