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Canfield Speech & Debate team undefeated overall this season
By bILLY LUDT
CANFIELD
The Canfield High School Speech & Debate Team has won all six tournaments in which it has competed in this season, and students have earned numerous individual first-place distinctions.
The 71-student team is led by coach Jeremy Hamilton, a math teacher at CHS, as well as seven assistant coaches.
“It’s incredible the opportunities [speech and debate] provides to students, and watching them grow over the four years on a team,” Hamilton said. “It’s really impressive.”
The four of those 71 students The Vindicator sat down with said their lives have undoubtedly changed after joining the speech and debate team.
“It’s a great opportunity, honestly,” said senior Michael Factor. “I don’t know if my high-school experience would be the same without the speech and debate team. It’s a really big influence on the success of the school overall. Kids in speech and debate tend to be like really academic. I think that rubs off on other people.”
Factor is undefeated in the debate category at 19 and 0. Factor’s peers and Hamilton attested to his dedication to the Public Forum Debate category.
“Michael’s probably reading at least 1,000 pages of text a month on those topics,” Hamilton said.
The team has competed at East Liverpool, JFK in Warren, Columbiana, Edison, Niles and Austintown schools so far this season. Their next tournament is at South Range High School on Saturday.
Fifteen to 20 schools compete at speech and debate tournaments. The competition is broken down into 12 categories, where students earn places within each category.
It’s possible to win first place in all 12 categories, but, Hamilton said, having a few first-place finishes is impressive in itself.
“Now that I’ve been exploring the world through speech and debate, and the opportunities it’s provided me, I definitely have found my calling in law and politics,” junior Dominic De-Ramo said.
DeRamo received the Brian Peteritis Memorial Award for being top speaker at The John Revezzo Invitational Tournament on Nov. 11 at Niles McKinley High School.
“It’s impressive the work they’re doing on both knowing the content and then knowing how to present it to a judge who’s not well-versed on the topic,” Hamilton said.
“To take philosophy and try to explain it to a mom is so difficult,” said Eva Lamberson, senior and team president. Lamberson’s current record is 17 and 2.
Depending on the category, topics of speech or debate can vary by week, month or encompass an entire season.
Practice is primarily research and recital or mock debates. Depending on the category, students can practice one-on-one with a coach, while others brainstorm for topics and practice debates.
“I think also a lot of what we do is practicing our skills,” DeRamo said. “We practice speaking; we practice staying calm in-round; we practice very intense debates and very tense situations where you have to be prepared for everything.”
For Lamberson and Factor, practice includes reciting speeches while driving.
Gregory Halley, a junior, competes in informative speech on a topic of his choice. His topic this season is surviving the apocalypse.
“You’d never know we were about to die,” he said.
Hamilton said Halley uses a bit of humor in his speech.
“The audience has to be engaged and enjoy it, while also being informed,” Halley said. “That’s where the balance needs to lie.”
Informative speech will have six total competitors in its category at each tournament. Competitors are ranked from one at the top to six at the bottom. Halley has all ones this season.
The National Speech and Debate Association named CHS’s team the 84th strongest in the country last school year. DeRamo, Factor, Halley and Lamberson have qualified for the state tournament in early season.
“I definitely think it’s been a great privilege and opportunity for us to do this, and especially with friends of ours and classmates and people we don’t necessarily even know across the entire state,” DeRamo said. “We practice a lot of great, useful skills; we meet a lot of great people.”