West High’s first debate style tournament was Saturday, October 1st at Narbonne High School.  More than fifteen high schools including LACES, Brentwood, and all of the high schools in Torrance competed in the tournament.   

  During the tournament, teams debated about various topics, everything from the probable cause to search students to foreign policies, always making sure they had evidence for what the said.  This requires West High students to work hard and prepare in zero period Speech and Debate.

  “West is pretty good at debate. We try our hardest and make it so we have little to nothing to improve,” said Alex Mills (11). All week the team participated in various drills and went over the legislation to prepare– and this proved to be worth it for the team.

  Jasmine Campos (11) and Ashley Xia (10) received a medal as a team and fellow teammate Rashmika Venturi (11) responded to this achievement,“I’m proud that they had worked hard to achieve their medal, and I think they were surprised because debate is such a subjective event and they didn’t know whether they would win or not.”

  Amanda Guan (12) feels confident in her performance at the tournament, “There’s no better feeling than leaving a round feeling like you’ve won! I’ve never done my event before and it’s a completely different dynamic not debating with my partner [that graduated last year], but I beat this girl from a school that’s really good in Lincoln Douglas, which feels pretty good.”

  The sweepstakes winners of this tournament will be announced at Debate’s next tournament on October 8th at Wildwood High School.  Come out and support them!