Nayland’s debaters brought back armfuls of accolades and awards from the Kahurangi-Marlborough Regional Debating Championship held on Saturday 23rd February at Nelson College for Girls.

The event attracted junior and senior teams from all of the Nelson colleges and involved upwards of 60 students, as well as staff coaches and mentors.

The intellectual rigour required to debate successfully is considerable in such a pressured environment. 

“Limited preparation debating requires students to work out a logical argument within 30 minutes and then talk convincingly for 6 minutes. Students learn to be objective, to be strategic and to evaluate ideas. Debating competitions create a realistic setting to test how well their logic holds up to scrutiny,” coach and manager Gaye Bloomfield said. She is supported in this role by manager/coach Duncan McKinlay.

The moots or statements debated during the rounds covered a range of issues such as:

‘This House believes that sports teams from liberal countries should refuse to play against sports teams from countries that commit major human rights abuses’

‘This house prefers news institutions choosing advertising instead of subscriptions or over pay per view models as a revenue source’

‘This house believes that members of parliament should be randomly selected from the general population of adults instead of being elected’.

The Nayland senior team of Cameron Dee, Merlyn Barrer and April Clarke went on to trounce Garin in the final, tackling the moot ‘this house would make it impossible to lie.’ 

As well as the team’s top title, Cameron Dee was selected for the regional team to compete later in the year at nationals. And, as if this was not enough, April Clarke was one of four students awarded ‘Highly Commended Speaker’ in recognition of her promising career as a debater.

One of Nayland’s three junior teams also received the top team title. Its members were Nayland’s Will Irvine and Kimberly Fitzgerald and Jesse Sherlock from Garin. They beat Nelson College in the final, debating the moot ‘this house regrets the rise of relationships on social media’. Will Irvine was also awarded best junior speaker.

“I felt like I got a lot better as a speaker and as an arguer,” Will said. “My debate skills definitely increased a whole lot. We got put against some really difficult teams and we got to see how they worked and tried to emulate that with our own debates. It was really interesting.”

“It was an amazing opportunity that I could participate in and the fact that I won my very first competition just made me feel really good about myself and really good that I could achieve a lot,” Kimberly explained.

Debaters from the other junior teams also got a lot out of the day. “I enjoyed really analysing their discussions and finding the weak points,” Tiaki Sharp said.

“It’s quite concentrated learning,” Malachai Stephenson observed.

“I think I was a bit more confident by the last debate because I’d lost all touch with my emotions after losing,” Lara Edmonds reflected.