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50p

Nationals Debate

28 April 2017
Mr Neil Bryant, Debate Coach
Kavi G, Whittall ’17 & Afyz M, Privett ’17 have seen many junior and senior championships, local, provincial, and national, in their years as debaters at Brentwood. This past April 21-23 in Vancouver, the boys buttoned on their well-worn competition suits, a shirt of which on Afyz is four inches short from the cuff to his wrist, and duked it out with teams from every province for the last six competitive rounds of their high school careers. Certainly the most decorated debate pair Brentwood has seen in a decade or more, these two boys, friends from before their time at our school, have mentored, demonstrated, performed, competed, explained, redoubled efforts, and retooled their styles countless times in their four years here, inspiring colleagues and frustrating opponents alike. Occasionally, the reverse was also true… After two unequivocal wins on the first evening against credible teams, the next bracketed round had these two draw the short straw – an Opposition-side weak case against arguably (see what I did there?) a most formidable Ontario Proposition team, a team slated to win the whole Senior National event. After 40 minutes of wrangling, squeezing $15 words out of the thesaurus, making thematic connections between substance and analysis that Rex Murphy would be stumped by, and refusing to take more than one Point of Information, our boys narrowly lost the round. While Kavi and Afyz did not place in the top ten debaters in the country at this tournament, their names are among the household monikers that will be used in debate classrooms all over western Canada for the next couple of years. Very few student names are synonymous with the public speaking art they practice. Like Messi is to soccer and Kleenex is to the tissue, it will not likely be long before some Grade 9 prodigy is called out for being “just as argumentative as Kavi was” … and having everyone else in the room grin and nod at the thought of such a comparison. Mr Neil Bryant, Debate Coach

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