RCHK debaters dominate inter-ESF competition in a shocking landslide victory

By Aidan Lai and Ryan Ng

RCHK junior debaters pictured above (from left to right): Leanne Leung, Taara Bailur, Bernice Au, Renee Ho, Andrea Chow, Aidan Lai, Ryan Ng, Athan Wong, Oscar So, Evie Shum (Photo by Maki Flauta)

The RCHK debate team takes it home! All three junior teams who participated in the competition dominated the podium. It seems their hard work and perseverance while training and preparing finally paid off.

Taking place on October 4, the Junior Inter-ESF Debate Tournament was a competition involving over five schools, including Sha Tin College, Island School and Singapore International School. With over fifteen teams and fifty participants in total, winning this competition was no easy feat for our debaters. They had less than a week to prepare for a full day of speaking and presenting, yet against all odds, they pulled through and came out on top.

Three motions (the statement that you have to argue for or against during the debate) were debated during the competition, which were of a wide variety and different levels of difficulty. The first was fully prepared, meaning the motion and the side that teams would be debating were pre-decided. The second was semi-prepared – only the motion was known, but teams would only find out which side they would be arguing for on the day. The last was impromptu, debaters were given the motion and side on the spot, and forty five minutes to prepare full speeches.

The RCHK junior debaters had little to no insight on the topics involved in this debate competition, and thus relied on their own ingenuity, open mind and industriousness to research and debate them, oftentimes having to argue against their personal beliefs in order to win.

Debate tournaments are without a doubt, incredibly challenging, and Junior Inter-ESF was no exception. Every participant had to go through rigorous preparation, research and speech-writing in order to fulfill the six minute speeches that this competition required. Most debaters even missed out on sleep to ensure nothing would go wrong.

“There were nights when I stayed up till the morning discussing strategy and our approach towards the debates,” says Leanne Leung, one of RCHK’s junior debaters. “It didn’t help that our preparation was on school days, and that we had assessments to work on, but the competition was just so important to us.”

Covering everything in such a short period of preparation, considering all the possibilities in these detailed and complicated topics, is a near-impossible task. Therefore, strategic preparation matters as much as applying strategies during the actual debate. From predicting the opponent’s arguments to writing down lists upon lists of rebuttals to said arguments, the debaters handled all of this in an organised manner. Utilising sophisticated strategies learned over the course of their debating careers and setting their priorities straight - in order to work at the highest efficiency.

“Our arguments were extremely important during our preparation,” says Taara Ballur, another RCHK debater, “Our speeches had to be done and fleshed out quickly, the clock wasn’t going to wait. However, our most important component was our game plan, our method at moving forward and responding to enemy attacks, which was our main priority during preparation.”

RCHK debaters in the top fifteen speakers listed here are: Aidan Lai, Ryan Ng, Taara Ballur, Andrea Chow, Oscar So, Leanne Leung, Athan Wong.

Despite the overwhelming odds of having to prepare on school days with limited time and knowledge, the RCHK junior debaters successfully conquered their opponents and brought home a landslide victory. The three teams from RCHK landed into top three winning teams and seven out of the top fifteen speakers were from RCHK.

“It was a hard journey forward but we weaved through the obstacles, and I think we did a great job during this competition,” Athan Wong says, “I really enjoyed working with my team and overall this has been a really good experience - not least of all because we won.”

All in all, the RCHK junior debate team earned valuable learning experience in time management, teamwork, and risk-taking. Especially for those who had just begun their journey into debating and participated in Junior Inter-ESF as their first debate competition. Their hard work paid off and the long hours spent preparing for this event were not in vain, for they had experienced their very first slice of victory.