On February 6th and 7th, Mead High School’s Speech and Debate class/club took on new endeavors! At the end of the week, going into the weekend, the MHS team joined in a tournament down at Pueblo Central, facing multiple different schools in the 4A state division, all on topics ranging from juvenile justice reform to nuclear fusion.
The experiences of students and teachers have been discussed recently around the Mead journalism/debate community, and new perspectives have been shared on how the tournament was conducted. Originally, during the ‘16-‘24 school years at Mead, staff Jamie Hedlun instructed and ran the debate class, however it was taken over by Ryan Campbell and was made into a club later on.
Both Campbell and Hedlun share lot of similar opinions around the benefits and hope that the club offers students “It looks like confidence and improvement in research skills, and also a wider worldview…good speech and debate students…can see different perspectives a lot more easily.”
More than anything, the success and can-do attitude plays a big role in being the leadership for the Speech and Debate team and its 100% reflected in the team members! Most members had a complete positive outlook. Brianna Fern (‘27), a competitor in the speech and debate tournament, said, “Speech and Debate helped me to kind of understand how we all bring such different perspective to a particular topic, and how we all have a really valuable perspective about kind of different things,” showing that speech and debate has helped her grow, understand people, and the world far more.
The same feelings are shared with other competitors such as Mason Hall (‘28), who says, “Speech and Debate called out to me because it was a way for me to get that perspective and a way for me to sharpen my own mind and my own political beliefs, while at the same time finding a community of like minded people.” Truly showing the benefits of competing and having a further outlook.
Although there were some setbacks throughout the competition, such as delays in running resolutions and starting on time, obstacles have never held back the Mead Mavericks! Even with some losses, the Mead Mavericks persevered gracefully and came out victorious in our hearts.
