Congress debate regional contest awards junior alternate to state
December 10, 2021
The Congress debate team competed in the Universal Interscholastic League regional contest at Region 9 on Nov. 10, with junior Emily Shephard placing.
The team members consisted of debate veterans, juniors Shephard, Candace Taggart, Rebecca Taggart and new member sophomore Chase Curry.
“We are blessed with some pretty natural speakers,” Congress coach Leslie Graham said.
Shephard placed fourth, making her the alternate for state competition.
“It was my third year doing it,” Shephard said. “I was pretty confident because I’ve placed in my previous years. However, I do think we had a slight disadvantage because, before, we used PrimeTime to practice. But we had a meeting the night before the meet to prepare.”
Rebecca Taggart agreed that the loss of PrimeTime practices that could overlap into lunch, if needed, affected her this year.
“It was a lot harder to find time on my own to practice,” Taggart said. “And because I was unprepared, I went in unsure.”
Graham said the team was not able to regularly practice with all members and coaches present due to schedule conflicts.
“We wish we had more time to prepare for it, but everyone’s schedules didn’t meet up,” Graham said. “Moving on from this year, we now know what we need to work more on though.”
Shephard said she was proud of everyone on the team in spite of the results.
“This year has been hard for the whole team, and for all of us to pull together in the end was impressive,” she said.
Curry sat in on Congress competition to learn since he competed in Cross-Examination debate last year.
“This competition is well-organized, and it was cool to just watch the debaters,” Curry said. “I like that Congress debate is more solo people speaking on different sides of the same subject instead of a team like CX.”
The team will have one more year with all of the current members.
“I’m so thankful our girls, and Chase [Curry], are not seniors this year,” Graham said. “So we have another year with them and we know what to do better next time.”
Taggart said that the competition really “stepped up their game” this year as well.
“To beat our competition, I plan on setting more time aside for preparation at the beginning of the year and get my confidence back,” she said.
Shephard plans to “redeem” herself next year.
“I know I can do better than I did so I’m shooting for the win,” Shephard said. “I’m going to try harder and not procrastinate until the night before, and I’m going to write both sides of the arguments to have a higher chance of more speaking time.”