The Speech and Debate team will take on Nationals in Birmingham, Alabama in June. After having a great season, five students qualified for Nationals.

“We only had two people qualify last year, Shaun and I, but this year we have five. In general, Oakville will be more able to work together towards doing better at Nationals than last year,” Aaron Mohabbat (12) said.

The students qualified for Nationals at the NSDA (National Speech and Debate Association) District Tournament held at Pattonville High School. The five that qualified were Gabi Connors (12) for Program of Oral Interpretation, Sohrab Azad (12) and Ryan Westwood (11) for Public Forum Debate, Shaun Lamar (12) for Lincoln Douglas Debate, and Mohabbat for International Extemporaneous.

“Qualifying for nationals my senior year is something that I have been preparing for ever since the beginning of the year. Seeing all the time I put into debate finally pay off is truly a great feeling,” Azad said.

The topics for the nationals tournament was released on May 1; the topics vary depending on the category the student is debating in. To prepare for the nationals tournament, the speech and debate team will break down arguments in their categories and do extensive research on those categories. The team will also pair up with other schools throughout the summer to practice and work on different styles of debate.

Some of the students even have a few goals in mind that they would like to reach, “I want to break top 60, I don’t know if that will actually happen, but I’ll try for that at least,” Lamar said.

Good luck to speech and debate as they prepare for the nationals tournament.