This weekend, the McLean’s Public Forum (PF) debate team will participate in the fourth Washington-Arlington Catholic Forensic League (WACFL) tournament of the year. WACFL is a local debate tournament that is held five times a year.
“WACFL 4 is a debate competition where debaters from different schools compete against each other to win it all,” sophomore and debate team member Michael Jiang said. “WACFL is the first step for new debaters to gain experience and most importantly, have fun.”
During this time, McLean will go against many other local schools, including familiar ones such as Langley High School, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and Marshall High School.
From Feb. 9-11, the PF team will also participate in the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) debate tournament, which is on the national circuit. This means that debaters will participate at a national level against other teams from all around the nation, sometimes even going against internal students.
“[The UPenn tournament] is one of the most prestigious tournaments on the national circuit and debaters may obtain bids to the Tournament of Champions from this tournament,” said freshman Noelle Kim, who is on the PF travel team. “If a debater makes it to a certain point in eliminations they obtain a bid to the Tournament of Champions, the most prestigious tournament, along with NSDA.”
As for every debate tournament, extensive preparation and research is needed to properly prepare. Debaters have to polish the full gamut of debate materials which include their own cases along with their blockfiles, which are their responses to the arguments of the opposing team.
“As always, lots and lots of research is involved,” said senior Jiayin Zou, captain of the McLean debate team. “The team members work closely together with their partners to develop cases and blockfiles that they’ll use during these multi day tournaments.”
As for the future, the debate team hopes to elevate the club’s position and to compete more at national level.
“The debate club/myself is trying to grow the club to have more national circuit teams,” Kim said. “Currently, we have only three teams on the national circuit.”
Ultimately, debate is an activity that requires an immense amount of preparation and experience. Local competitions such as WACFL and more prominent national competitions such as the UPenn tournament all contribute to the success of the debate team.
“The best way to learn how to debate is to learn through experience, and each of these tournaments will help our debaters steadily improve,” Zou said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see them attending Tournament of the Champions within the next few years.”
