Speech and debate kicks off with new coaches and strong novices

After early successes in October, the 90 members on the speech and debate team are diligently preparing for the upcoming novice, league and Santa Clara University (SCU) tournaments in November under the guidance of new leaders.

At the Oct. 19 league tournament at Leland High School, sophomore Michael Ren and freshman Candace Chiang went undefeated for novice parliamentary debate. 

“I am very impressed with the results of the tournament,” junior Rohan Bharadwaj said. “I am very proud of the novices and I think they have a very successful path ahead of them.”

The team’s overall progress can be attributed to key new additions. Although captains have not yet been announced, speech and debate adviser Erick Rector has employed two new coaches: Chris Harris, who will be coaching Lincoln-Douglas debate and extemporaneous speech, and Allison Brownlow, who will be coaching public forum and parliamentary debate.

Harris has been coaching debate for five years at various high schools, as well as at universities such as Santa Clara University and San Francisco State. Before that, he had experience professionally judging debate off and on for 10 years. 

“After judging for a few years, I’ve been asked by a few coaches to possibly help out and coach,” Harris said. “I like [coaching because] at the best and the lowest level, you see people competing the best that they can.”

He began coaching congressional debate at the school in January of this year. After former coach Steve Clemmons moved to Oregon for a new coaching position, Harris has now taken over Lincoln-Douglas debate as well and hopes to bring new ideas to the team.

“I would like to emphasize philosophy and current events; there’s not enough in Lincoln-Douglas debate,” Harris said. “I would primarily like to bring experience; my experience on the college level could help the high schoolers.”

He added that he plans on guiding the upperclassmen and refining their skills, so that they can motivate the novices on the team and “bring them up to par.”

“Students learn best from other students and that defines a growing program,” Harris said. “I’m there to answer questions, a guiding hand rather than a formal instructor.” 

Junior Rohith Krishna, who debates Lincoln-Douglas, said the team has already begun to reap the benefits of Harris’s coaching.

“Mr. Harris is a very knowledgeable and versatile coach,” Krishna said. “He has a lot of experience coaching top debaters, and he puts a lot of effort to help us improve individually and as a team.”

In addition to Harris, coach Brownlow, who has been coaching for seven years, has also added her professional background and structure to the public forum team this year. 

“I really like watching my students succeed and seeing how people learn to think and learn how to be persuasive, and that’s one of the primary things that I like about coaching,” Brownlow said.

Because the public forum and parliamentary debate did not have a coach last year, senior Aditya Choudhary said that Brownlow has already greatly improved the team.

“She is very knowledgeable about the topics and helps educate everyone on the team about background information,” Choudhary said. 

With this initial progress, the team hopes to use its strong new additions at the novice tournaments on Nov. 2-3, the next league tournament on Nov. 10-11 and the first invitational of the year at SCU on Nov. 15-17.

“We just need to look at our previous rounds and keep working at improving on the mistakes that we have made,” Krishna said. “Our team is very strong and committed and with tournaments such as SCU coming up, we have to work harder and make the small adjustments that make big differences in rounds.”

Although the individual events team has not yet competed this season, junior Supriya Khandekar said they are working hard to prepare the novices for their first tournament.

“We are perfecting the content of our speeches and aiming for solid delivery,” Khandekar said. “We've been productive in all our of practices, and it's now coming down to making it as polished as possible.”