The semis and finals of the Dunedin Schools Debating Competition for 2021 were held at St Hilda's last Wednesday and Columba College came away with incredible results.

After debating fortnightly throughout the year against dozens of teams from all over Dunedin, Columba 1 (Sophie Davis, Sophie Bowmar, Jody Syme) joined Bayfield, Otago Boys, and St Hilda's to form the four teams who broke into the semis. Columba 2 (Angela Fu, Skyla Murray, Bridgette Sutton, and Anise Maclean) were also impressively in contention to break but narrowly missed out on points.

After a unanimous win in the semi finals against OBHS 1 negating the motion, ‘TH would stop teaching children that all opinions are valid‘, Columba 1 progressed on to the final to oppose Bayfield 1 to negate the motion, ‘TH regrets the allocation of funds to corporations in COVID bail outs.’ In an extremely high quality debate, Columba won in a 3-2 split, becoming the winners of the whole Dunedin competition for 2021. This is the fifth year in a row that Columba has won the competition!

As well as winning the overall competition, Sophie Bowmar placed 3rd and Jody Syme placed 10th in the overall rankings, and Sophie Davis was named 'Most Promising' as the top Year 11 Speaker. These are all impressive results considering the number of rounds Columba missed due to other events and COVID complications.

Four Senior Columba teams were entered in the competition this year and following a busy but exciting season, Columba was able to come away with not only overall success but also high amounts of improvement seen by every student across all participating teams. All of the students would like to thank Ms Togneri for her constant dedication and passion to debating; without her, Columba’s success would not be possible.