Palatine High School hosted the ninth annual Walk the Plank tournament on Feb. 3 and had a dominating performance winning awards in multiple divisions.
This year, Palatine had a great showing with sophomore debater Ishhaan Mishra taking first place in the varsity Lincoln-Douglas (LD) division and senior Timothy Sakwa winning third in varsity LD. Other awards included sophomore Paloma Castaneda’s fifth place on the JV circuit and Tessa Faltinek’s fourth place on the Novice circuit.
On the Public Forum (PF) side of things, where debaters compete in pairs, Dominic Kubacik and Aiden Smith won third place, followed by Mahek Acharya and Dev Dhooper in fifth.
Along with awards for the debate itself, there are also awards granted for outstanding speakers in their division, with almost all PHS debaters winning one of these awards.
“All the debaters did a very good job in the tournament and it’s clear to see that we have all improved from the beginning of the year,” said JV LD debater Paloma Castaneda.
One reason for these drastic improvements is the dedication of both the students and the coaches on the debate team. Students meet at least twice a week under the guidance of coaches Samantha Dolen, Leslie Shock and Erika Varela. While at practice they do research, have mock debates and discuss ideas.
This tournament included two of the major styles of debate, Lincoln Douglas and Public Forum. Lincoln Douglas debaters compete alone and typically cover issues of ethics and morality, while students competing in Public Forum work on cases relating to current events with a partner. These cases are always complex, and it is sometimes a challenge to research and write cases while also finding information for rebuttals on the other side of the case.
Due to some technical issues with Tabroom, the debate round managing system, the tournament was completed in four rounds instead of five, but it was still a long day, with students arriving at Palatine High School at around 7:30 in the morning and staying until 5 later that night. Although it is a lot of work hosting a tournament, the experience was overall a positive one and it allowed students a great opportunity to compete at their own school while being great representatives of Palatine High School.
