After a long day of school, three speech and debate students and the class’s two teachers headed to Palestine last Friday for a speech meet.

There were two types of debate rounds offered at the meet, composed of 16 LD debaters and 30 CX teams total. The speech meet started at approximately 4:30 PM and ended around 10,  with students debating three rounds.

“The meet went really well,” teacher Melonie Menefee said. “It was a really good warmup for the district meet on Wednesday with the wide variety of cases and skill levels. All in all I was very pleased with the outcome.”

Menefee teaches Congress and CX in the Speech and Debate class every day; she works with teacher Jill Henson to teach different types of speaking events.

“I had to judge three CX rounds in a row,” Menefee said. “I find it really mentally tiring to judge debate rounds back to back because of switching between mindsets through each case, but it’s always interesting to see other teams and how they take the topic and run their cases.”

Sophomore Colby Menefee and senior Nadia Garcia competed in CX.

“Going to an afterschool meet is something that we usually don’t get the chance to do very often,” Menefee said. “A good thing about going to an after school meet is that we got to think about our cases all day long when we usually just wake up really early and have to debate.

I think the meet was a really good chance for my partner and I to go and get prepared for the district meet on Wednesday.”

The CX team won two rounds and lost one, leaving them in sixth place.

“I think we should’ve won the one round we lost,” Garcia said. “The judge just didn’t like our case, but we debated very well and we shouldn’t have lost.”

Last year, Garcia’s team got third place at the Palestine meet. Garcia said this was unexpected and they expected to place higher this year. The team went on to compete at a meet at our high school the next morning and placed first.

“If I could’ve changed anything about the round we lost, we would’ve had more supporting evidence,” Garcia said. “I knew my cases a lot better for the next morning’s meet and for the district meet. Overall I think it was really exciting to go to an after school meet because I have nothing to do on a Friday night and I love to debate.”

Senior Kaiden Loep went to the meet and debated in LD for three rounds, placing in eighth overall.

“I didn’t really enjoy going to a meet after school because I was already so tired from being at school all day,” Loep said. “I was really disappointed in myself because I probably could have done better, but honestly I think one of the losses I took was the judge’s fault for not paying attention.”

Loep won one round and lost two of the rounds she debated in. Loep said that she made her cases in a bit of a rush the day of the speech meet.

“I probably could’ve made my cases sooner, but I didn’t,” Loep said. “I was having an off day and was lacking confidence according to the ballots, but I made up for it the next day when I got first at our meet. I know that for my next meet I will be making my cases sooner so I don’t get in the bind I did Friday. Overall I am glad that I went to the meet because I learned a lot from more experienced debaters.”