GPS Debating

Round 2 vs St Ignatius’ College Riverview

Last Friday, Shore hosted Riverview on topics of sport. Our debaters built on their success from Round 1, winning nine of the fifteen debates.

The Year 7 teams affirmed the topic “We should ban all contact sport” once again coming away with a clean sweep. The 7As stressed the impact on young people’s mental health and effectively held off against a countermodel from Riverview. Similarly, the 7Cs effectively fought against a countermodel involving sideline medics, managing to mitigate their opponents’ arguments about the cultural benefits of sport and highlight the mental and physical harms of contact sport.

There were mixed results from the Year 8 and Year 9 teams, who argued “Countries should only be allowed to spend a certain amount of money on their sporting teams and athletes.” The 8A and 8B teams both suffered defeats (perhaps unfairly for the 8Bs) while the 8Cs managed a win in their first debate of the GPS competition. Among the Year 9 teams, 9A and 9C secured victories while the 9B team, despite speaking well, fell short after letting some of the opposition’s points go unchallenged.

The 10As (pictured in the image above) were the only Year 10 debate of the night and managed to back up their solid Round 1 performance with another win. Riverview proved to be a difficult opponent in the debate topic “We should never ban athletes or teams based on nationality or the country they represent.” Max Kim led the set up and analysis of Shore’s case before Daniel Kang responded to Riverview’s attempt to narrow the debate. He rebutted exceedingly well while whipping and introducing key points of substantive. At third, Michael Kwak refocused the debate with key weighing and stakeholder analysis of affected athletes. Assisted competently by Ramon Zhang, the 10As deftly refuted Riverview and brought back a well-deserved victory.

Debating the same topic as Year 10, the results in the Opens debates were much less favourable, with losses for the First, Second and Third teams. The one bright light among the shadows were the mighty Fourths, comprised of Max McAlpine, Charlie Ashton and Tom Wait, who secured the Opens’ sole win in their first debate of the season. Frustration was the theme in the Seconds and Thirds who came close but were unable to snatch a win.

We entered the prep room one man down but stepped out with an effective case that not only highlighted that the actions of a government were beyond the control of players and fans, but also that it would harm these stakeholders. At first, I outlined the power of players to enact change when they were allowed to play on and how bans could more easily be turned into propaganda. At Second, Tom Marshall effectively revealed how bans could unfairly profile and discriminate against players who had done nothing wrong. Will Defina revealed that the opposition’s mitigation strategy of allowing players to play if they denounced their organisation/government and switch to another team would fail to prevent our harm. However, Riverview managed to separate the impacts to players and impacts to oppressed people, imparting this division on the adjudicator and, while we won the issue of players, it was deemed that helping oppressed people was a more important principle and thus Riverview won the debate.

Next week, we head to Sydney Grammar School for our first away debate of the season. Grammar are a formidable opposition and, while the debates are always more challenging, victory is always sweeter. With some success against Grammar in the ISDA, this round will test the impressive depth of Shore debating seen this week against Riverview.

Mesake Taulawakeiaho
Captain of Debating