2010-2011 State High School Debate Tournament results

DMACC (Ankeny campus) hosted the 2010-2011 IHSSA State High School Debate Tournament this past weekend and results are complete. Dowling Catholic won 1st and 2nd place in the policy debate division, West Des Moines Valley won 1st and 2nd in the Lincoln-Douglas debate division, Indianola won 1st and 2nd in Public Forum debate (large school division), and Okoboji won 1st and 2nd in Public Forum debate (small school division). Congratulations!

If two teams from the same school are scheduled to debate one another in the finals, they don't actually debate. Instead, the higher seed of the two is declared the winner. This is called a "close-out." I can't recall a time this many debate divisions all closed-out.

There is also a sweepstakes award. This award goes to the school which does the best in all of the debate events, including Student Congress. This year, Des Moines Roosevelt won the sweepstakes award.

Back to school

The school year has started and that means back to work for me. I teach American Government at the high school level. I also teach an Advanced Placement Government and Politics class for which students can earn college credit.

I used to teach, and coach, high school debate, but I resigned that position last year. I’m sure I’ll miss debate, in fact, I do already. Each year brought a new debate topic to study and I enjoyed learning about them. I’ll miss working with the debaters, too; that was the best part of the job. Most people would be surprised how competitive high school debate is and how hard debaters work in the summer and during the school year.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate in Ottawa, IL in 1858.