On 12 March the Nayland College debaters took part in the annual Kahurangi-Marlborough Regional Championship, organised, and hosted by NZ Schools Debating. However, this year it looked a little different. With the whole country under Covid restrictions the regional debating competitions around the country are being held via zoom. This meant that instead of gathering all the schools from around the region together to debate in person, as well as have the adjudicators travel to nelson, everyone would participate online. 

The Nayland teams gathered at school on Saturday with each team in a separate room to debate. The online debate also meant that team members who were isolating at home could still participate. Debating online is vastly different to in person, however the day was still a success.

Debating at Nayland has grown significantly over the past few years. This year we entered seven teams into the competition, with students from Year 9 to Year 13. It is a national tradition to have a team mascot as good luck and this year some teams chose to join in on the fun, bringing along favourite childhood toys.

The last debates of the day were the junior and senior finals. We had an entirely Nayland junior final with Nayland Blue (Thora Moffatt, Emmogen Brown and Ciara McLellan) versus Nayland Silver (Samantha Gerritsen, Millie MacBrayne and Finn Kirby-Pinguet). And for the senior finals Will Irvine, Ra Edmonds and Tiaki Sharp went up against the senior Waimea College team and came second. 

There are individual prizes given out for excellent speaking and presentation. The regional team is also selected at the end of the competition. These students will be going up to Wellington to compete in the National Debating Competition at the end of May.

Results for the day:

• Most promising junior speaker – Thora Moffat

• Best Junior Speaker – Finn Kerby-Pinguet

• Best Senior Speaker – Stella Bloomfield

• Junior Winners – Nayland Blue: Thora Moffat, Emmogen Brown and Ciara McLellan

• Regional Team selected to go to Wellington for the Nationals: Will Irvine, Stella Bloomfield, and Ysabella Abel

It is a great success for our school that the Regional Team, selected out of the everyone participating in the Kahurangi-Marlborough competition, are all from Nayland College. 

A massive thank you to everyone who has worked very hard to grow debating at our school. In the next few years, we want to continue to grow the debating team, so I encourage anyone who is interested from any year level to come and join. See Mrs Gaye Bloomfield for more information.