Last year, the Delta High School Speech and Debate team successfully won the State Championship, with the interpretation field coming in first place and the debate team picking up a third-place finish.
This season, the team is doing their best to replicate their win.
Coach Danielle Lopez said, “Our secret weapon is going to the front range and doing springboards and asynchronous online debates because the judges give you really good feedback.”
But coaches aren’t the only ones excited for the next chapter of their season.
Senior Ben Nortnick, a varsity debater, said, “I’m very excited. I think that there is a very big difference between the competition we see here and the competition that we get on the front range. If we’re gonna have a chance at these bigger tournaments like state and nationals, then we need the experience.”
However, not everyone is as enthusiastic for the second half of the season as they are.
Sophomore Owen Esser said, “I’m busy and one of the tournaments falls on the day I’m going to a dance, and then it’s very time-consuming, and waking up early is affecting the way I am performing in school so I need to take a break.”
Despite Esser’s take, not everyone is feeling overwhelmed in the same way.
Nortnick said, “I’m actually fully prepared for the next couple of tournaments, I couldn’t be more ready.”
The debate season has been looking up recently. At the Delta Panther Pride Tournament, Delta won the sweepstakes, an overall tally of all the team’s points, and at Central High School’s tournament, Delta won the sweepstakes by almost 40 points, taking first, second, and third in Program of Oral Interpretation and taking first, second, and fourth in Lincoln-Douglas Debate.
Regarding the team’s recent successes, Lopez said, “It gives me a lot of mixed feelings…A lot of the seniors are graduating.”
