Select members of the HHS debate team recently attended the VHSL Regional Debate Tournament at Sherando High School. One of these debaters, junior Aries Ametsreiter, described the experience as enjoyable yet stressful.

“It’s kind of hard to sleep the night before. You realize early in the morning that you’re going to be debating all day against students that are just as qualified as you if not better,” Ametsreiter said.

The nervousness beforehand is only a precursor to the actual debate tournament. Once the students arrive, they have to get into the mindset of debate which means putting all their personal biases to the side.

“You have to realize that debate isn’t about being right or wrong, factually or morally, it’s about convincing a judge,” Ametsreiter said.

Another debater from HHS, junior John Niland, felt the same way.

“You learn to think strongly about whatever it is you’re debating,” Niland said.

Passion is only one of the many aspects of debate that must be mastered in order to win. Debaters also have to provide a strong argument to convince the judges that their side of the issue is the right one. Even both of these combined, however, do not guarantee a win. There can also be subliminal aspects to who wins a debate that even the judges may not be aware of.

“When you go into a debate round, no matter how right or creative or innovative you are with your argument, your judges will judge what you say based on how you look, how you speak. They’ll boil it down to how much they like you,” Ametsreiter said.

Despite this, all three debaters that attended the tournament, Zach Benevento and Aries Ametsreiter as a team, as well as John Niland, placed fourth alternate, meaning that if another team cannot move on to the state competition, they will.

Both Ametsreiter and Niland hope that they will be allowed to continue on to states, but know that the competition is tight.

“There’s a ton of competition especially with John Handley High School,” Ametsreiter said.

The rivalry with Handley is not the only thing that annoys Niland, however. He also dislikes it when judges and debaters suddenly switch styles of debate. He thinks that this takes away from the quality of the debate.  For example, if a judge from Lincoln-Douglas debate, a style based on debating morals, is judging a Public Forum debate, a style based on debating current events topics, the judge may judge the debate differently. Niland thinks that judges should be educated about the style of debate they are judging.

“It’s like having a referee for a football game that says, ‘I’m going to give you four points for a touchdown instead of the normal six,’” Niland said.

Even so, Niland says that he will continue to take debate for the rest of high school and possibly beyond. Ametsreiter thought the same.

“[Debate] is fun for one thing, and it keeps you engaged in real life problems,” Ametsreiter said.

Debate teacher Aaron Cosner agreed with Ametsreiter. He believes that debate is the most useful class a student can take because it promotes critical thinking and teaches many other skills.

Ametsreiter has learned many skills from debate, although he does think there is one small downside.

“[Debate] has messed me up in my english classes actually. I can’t really write a normal english paper any more because I’m too used to the debate format,” Ametsreiter said.

Although some people might say that the point of debate is just to argue, Ametsreiter thinks there is more to it than just that.

“The point of debate is to engage students in international topics that challenge students to think outside of the box,” Ametsreiter said.