The speech and debate team returned from the state competition at OU with medals in tow.

Senior James Williams earned 2nd place for domestic extemporaneous speaking. In foreign extemporaneous speaking, senior Garrett Eakers earned 3rd place and junior Isaac Kabrick earned 4th place. Freshman Maddie Fresonke placed 6th for her standard oratory speech. Sophomores Robby and Bobby Walters also placed 6th in Policy Debate.

This year’s topic of policy debate was: Should the United States Federal Government substantially increase its development or exploration of the Earth’s oceans?

Robby and Bobby Walters are juniors who have been debating in Policy Debate as partners since their freshman year.

“For both of us, it has been very difficult being that English is not our first language. Debating in something that has influenced not only in our understanding but also has made us a better policy makers to understand legislature and to not only understand these things but also place in them. It has definitely helped us a lot. I felt pretty confident especially when it came to this year,” Bobby said.

Bobby Walters gave props to his brother for partner debate.

“Partner debate is nothing easy. Your partner should have as much knowledge as you and his argument should be as strong as you’re willing to put yours out there. You should be able to be accountable for each other during their speeches. Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am now especially since freshman year. We’ve definitely grown together as a team,” Bobby said.

Fresonke also competed in Policy Debate with freshman Karissa Henning, debating the development and exploration of the ocean like the Walters brothers. She also competed standard oratory, a type of speech where one takes the speech of another and makes it their own. She delivered a speech over feminism by Emma Watson on how feminism should be treated as a human rights fight instead of being defined as bigotry.

The team has given their success to speech and debate coach, Cailey Gray. They also agreed that credit should be given to Eakers and junior Shaun Johnson for the extensive amount of filing they did this year for the team overall.

Eakers didn’t debate at state, but in speech, he participated in foreign extemporaneous. He gave a speech about the scandal in Brazil with the Petrobras oil company and their president, then the civil unrest in Yemen and the influence of foreign powers in that civil war along with two others.

“I’ve only been doing it for two years now but into the first year, I stopped getting so nervous,” Eakers said. “Second time around with Regionals and State, I was confident enough going in to know I was going to do well, which took away all of the nervous.”

Williams participates in domestic extemporaneous speech, which deals with issues within the United States. He also competes in Lincoln Douglass debate.

“We debated whether governments are obligated to provide food security for their citizens. So basically the debate kind of hinged on what exactly are the obligations of governments and what do they owe their citizens. It was interesting,” Williams said.

Kabrick took foreign extemporaneous speaking to state and placed fourth.

“With foreign extemp, we draw a five questions out of a hat and we pick one then we have to 30 minutes to prepare a speech based on stuff we filed beforehand. You can’t use the Internet essentially. Foreign extemp speech deals with foreign issues, anything outside of the United States.  I talked about Russian sanctions, Yemen’s civil war and Australia’s political system and Costa Rica’s change in energy policies. It’s a lot of fun,” Kabrick said.

“I was really excited about it.  I’ve been doing really well this year,” he added.

“This is my last one, obviously because I’m a senior. It’s the second time I’ve been to state and it was just really cool because last year I went to state, I wasn’t very good yet so I didn’t have a chance to win or medal. This year was really cool because I was on the same level as the people I was competing with so it was good competition and I ended up getting second place for domestic extemp,” Williams said.

To prepare before debates, Kabrick openly talked about his routine.

“I drink a can of Dr. Pepper before every round, which is incredibly  bad for my health. I’m going to die but it gets my brain where it needs to be and gives me that little extra energy boost,” Kabrick said. “I also solved a lot of Rubik’s cubes. I have a caffeine and Rubik’s cube addiction and debate has fueled both of those.”

The speech and debate team strongly gave props to each other.

“Maddie is a freshman that placed at state which is absurd to me. That’s something I never got to do because it’s really hard and I am forever impressed,” Kabrick said.

Fresonke thanked all of the upperclassmen for the help she received.

Altogether, the whole team thanked each other for all the work they’ve done to earn their success.

“Without Mrs. Gray, we wouldn’t have that teamwork and we wouldn’t be such a family as we are now,” Robby Walters said.

HCP’s Speech and Debate team’s participants were also recognized with the Academic Achievement Award by OSSAA for having a cumulative GPA of 3.25 or higher.