By Thomas Chung
Opinion Editor

On Sept. 15, the Gabrielino Speech and Debate team arrived at school early to participate in the annual Icebreaker competition. The Icebreaker speech tournament is an opportunity for novices, new members of the Speech team, and varsities, veteran members of the Speech team, to bond together by preparing, working, and competing in pairs.

Without the pressure of being a typical tournament that contributes to overall team performance or standing, the Icebreaker acts as a fun introductory experience for the Speech team to grasp the workings of Speech and Debate and to meet the teammates that they will be competing with for the rest of the year.

“It was a really nice way to start off the year and it’s cool to be able to meet people I’ll be competing with throughout the year,” sophomore Sharon Liu said. “[They] were really friendly and supportive of one another and it just made me really happy because that’s what speech teaches us to do.”

The pairs entered into four impromptu rounds, where experienced speech members were able to impart their knowledge onto novice speech members. Normally, speech tournaments involve a set script where participants are put into a pool to compete. However, with improv duo, spar, radio tv interview, and character debate events, the Icebreaker provided plenty of opportunities for Speech members to be introduced and reintroduced into a competitive speech environment.

“It’s a chance for varsities and novices to break out of their shell and get comfortable with speaking in public,” Team Captain Jaycob Wahinehookae, senior, explained.

While adults are usually invited to judge students during Speech tournaments, the Icebreaker was judged through a system where six competing pairs ranked each other in each round. At the end of the four rounds, a final score is created by eliminating the highest and lowest scores and averaging the two middle scores.

“Sometimes you just need to break out of your shell and just have fun,” junior Raymond Tran said.

The Icebreaker tournament ended around 2 p.m., with six trophies given out for top finalists and six pirate flags given out for semi-finalists, and with members of the Speech team gaining invaluable experiences.