The debate team swept out the competition yesterday by taking 1st, 2nd, and 5th places at the District Cross-Examination Debate Tournament at Region 8 in Pittsburgh. Damian (Chito) Vazquez and Jonathan Tinajero teamed up to take 1st place, while Guen Canon and Rylan Baird took 2nd and Kevin Cooper and Slayton Batts got 5th. The 1st and 2nd place teams will advance to the state contest in Austin,Tx on March 13th. 

“I was very stressed, pretty much the whole day,” Vazquez said. “I really did not want to lose.”

The debate team has been working towards this competition since the beginning of the year. A few of the members claim that their biggest motivation to do well was to beat their self-proclaimed rivals, Atlanta. 

“I was happy about winning,” Tinajero said. “But, I was most happy that we kicked Atlanta out of state for the first time in a long time.”

While this was a very momentous win for the top 2 teams, the team of Cooper and Batts had amazing success also. Both novice debaters, the team wiped out two other novice teams as well as a varsity team!

“I definitely didn’t expect us to do as well as we did,” Cooper said. “[But] It did feel really good to get medals, since this is something we had been working towards all year.”