Delta College’s Speech and Debate team has started the semester’s competition season strong and aims to dominate as they continue.
The first semester tournament, held on Sept. 27 to 28, resulted in a second-place finish among the two-year institution division and a third-place finish overall.
Annum Khan, a speech and debate team member, said that the successful results of the first tournament indicated the team’s talent.
“It was a huge success. We were at San Francisco State for two days, we had 13 students, and we had all of our students almost break in an event. That means making it final to an event. Delta won third place overall out of all the colleges so that includes UC Berkeley, UOP, University of Pittsburgh was also there and we ended up beating all those schools. We were second overall in community colleges so that was a really big one,” Khan said.
With individual members earning first place in Novice Parliamentary Debate, Open Dramatic Interpretation, and Open Communication Analysis, among various other top five placings, members are achieving several prestigious accolades.
The Speech and Debate team is formed under the course of Communication Studies 52, led by instructor Joseph Burrows.
Coming into this season after finishing the previous competitive cycle with first place in the Lincoln-Douglas debate sweepstakes and second place in the overall Nationals Sweepstakes within the two-year division, the Mustangs are no stranger to winning amongst heavy competition.
Khan also stated that the team continues to only aim higher in their goals, as team dedication remains persistent.
“Our performance I think it’s only getting better from here. Last year was a huge success. It was the first time a Delta team got to travel to nationals and Delta won first place in the Lincoln-Douglas debate. The difference we have this semester is that we have a bigger team and all these students are new and they’re willing to do as many different speech and debate events so I think it’s only up from here because we started up so big and we have so many tournaments coming this semester and next semester. It’s looking good,” Khan said.
Among the tasks teammates can expect to complete are speech tournaments, community speech activities, commitments to office hours, a focus between the three events of extempt, impromptu, and debate, and intramural speech activities.
Team organization has about four coaches at every practice split between the speech and debate aspects, with the speech students focused on working with the speech coaches and the debate students on working with the debate coaches, leading to a collaborative debrief for their plan of action.
Tournament competitions are held every month. A tournament in Santa Rosa is planned for October.
Delta will host a tournament Nov. 1 through 3 in partnership with UOP, which will have participants from institutions statewide.
Another tournament will be held at Diablo Valley College, and the last tournament of the semester will be held at Las Positas College.
This semester is considered a practice round for the team as they prepare to achieve accolades in the next semester’s competitions.
Plans for the team the following semester include traveling to the Phi Ro Pi tournament in Washington, DC, and garnering enough support and funds for a trip to South Korea for Nationals.
In addition to the team, there is also a Speech and Debate Club, where members can learn more about tournament scheduling, speaking in a debate, building communication, and presenting skills, among the overall basic concepts of debate, for those unfamiliar with Speech and Debate procedures.
All updates and overviews are posted on the team’s Instagram account @sjdcdarkhorse.
