By Marley Anthony, Staff Writer
From Feb. 7 through Feb. 9, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Speech and Debate team traveled to Corpus Christi for the “Speech on the Beach” tournament. Senior and captain of the team, Max Noreiga, freshman, Anita Igwe, and sophomore, Tony Morris, tied for first place. Along with winning first place in the Debate Sweepstakes, the team won the Top Overall University Tournament Team Award.
The Speech and Debate team won against schools such as Texas A&M Corpus Christi, University of North Texas, and Del Mar. Tony Morris and Dr. James West, the teams Director of Forensics and Coach, talked about the strategy for how their team won, “It’s a lot of critical thinking, you have to be prepared to not only have the best arguments for your side, but you have to prepare for what your other team’s best argument is going to be. When entering a tournament, the Speech and Debate team is given 30 minutes to plan their argument and how they will direct their speeches to have the judges on their side. We diagram and sort out the best arguments on our board, and the team takes notes for the debate,” said West.
Noriega, Igwe, and Morris, along with being on the Speech and Debate team, are also all members of ROTC. UMHB’s Speech and Debate team is preparing students for their future in the military. Morris stated, “Speech and Debate is beneficial for ROTC because you are learning to become a leader in the army, and you need to be able to talk in front of big crowds.” Morris added, “We’ll have to be able to order the troops and also be able to speak in motivating ways.”
UMHB’s Speech and Debate team will travel to Washington, D.C., for their next tournament from April 3 to Apr. 5. There, they will continue to learn persuasive debate techniques and how to incorporate speech and debate into their future career paths.
