South Dakota's top high school speech and debate competitors are busy preparing for the season concluding SDHSAA Annual State Debate & Individual Events Tournament. The 2015 State Debate & Individual Events Tournament will be held at Harrisburg High School on Friday & Saturday March 6-7. Schools, based on their enrollment, are divided into Class "AA" and Class "A" for state tournament competition.
The State Debate & Individual Events Tournament will find students competing for state championships in some of South Dakota’s oldest statewide high school competitions. The 2015 State Tournament will crown the 101st Annual State Champions in Policy Debate. Extemporaneous Speaking events have been held for 89 years. Original Oratory is marking its 81st year of State Championship competition. Although having a long history in the realm of political debate, Lincoln-Douglas Debate is one of the more recent high school state championship speech activity events and will crown its 35th group of state champions. The newest speech activity, Public Forum Debate, will mark its 13th year as a State Tournament event.
The 2014 three-time defending Class “AA” Sweepstakes Team is Aberdeen Central High School and the 2014 Class “A” Sweepstakes champion team was Vermillion High School.
No admission is charged for any of the competition and the public is invited to observe any of the competition during the State Debate & Individual Events Tournament. The Public Forum Debate format, which is intended for the man-on-the-street audience, will debate the issue of: “On balance, economic globalization benefits worldwide poverty reduction”. Each Public Forum debate will provide a short audience oriented competition with each debate lasting approximately 35 minutes. Lincoln-Douglas competitors will be debating the issue: “Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage”. Nationwide, policy debaters have been debating the topic: “The United States federal government should substantially increase its non-military exploration and/or development of the Earth's oceans”.
A copy of the State Debate and Individual Events Tournament schedule is available on the SDHSAA websitehttp://www.sdhsaa.com/FineArts/Speech/DebateIndividualEvents/StateTournamentSchedule.aspx
The results of the Tournament will be posted on the SDHSAA website, after the conclusion of competition on Saturday, March 7. For more information, click here
