Simpson Returns from World Debate Champs

Year 12 Thomas Simpson recently returned from the World Schools Debating Championship in Scotland. He shared some of his experiences yesterday afternoon:

When did you leave?

We left on the 6th August, and have been away for about three weeks.  One week was spent in training in Sydney, and then we flew to Dundee for the actual tournament.

How many times did you personally compete?

There were five of us representing New Zealand; the competition teams consist of three speakers.  Throughout the tournament we were rotating speakers and speaking in different positions with different combinations of people each time.  I competed in six debates in total, of the nine that New Zealand was entered for.  I was happy with that.

We won all eight of our preliminary round debates, but then lost our first knock-out round in the octo-final to Singapore.  Singapore went on to win the entire competition. We qualified for knock-out rounds in second position, and came ninth overall.  Only New Zealand and England won all eight of the preliminary debates with only one dropped ajudicator.  What this means is that all three debate judges during each speech found 'for' us, except for one individual, in one instance.  This was a really pleasing result.

What will you particularly remember about this experience?

The highlight for me was the day we had in Edinburgh, looking around.  It is a great city.  The nature of the competition was really different.  In New Zealand the style of debating is quite homogenous, but we realised that each country has it's own particular style, which was interesting and unexpected. 

 The teams were of hugely varying ability - in fact, there were a lot of ESOL teams (English for Speakers of Other Languages).  It was amazing to hear people arguing so eloquently in a second language. I'd say that the Greek team actually spoke more polished and grammatically correct English than we did, which was great to see.

Where do you go from here in terms of debating?

We have the Hamilton final against Hillcrest on 31st August.  The New Zealand team that was picked for this tournament will also go to the next one, which will be in January in Capetown. Debating is not something I'm using as a platform for any particular career development, it is something that I do for fun, so I'm enjoying the opportunities it is creating for me.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our three coaches: Steve Hind, Daniel Swain and Udayan Mukherjee. They were great, and helped us a lot.  Also, we have had great support from the entire New Zealand debating community.  My dad came with me on the trip, which was great, and Mr Brown and Mrs Bastion from HBHS set us up in debating over the years, and got us into a great position to compete at the highest levels.