By Bren Belmonte | Staff Writer

   Gabrielino High School’s  Speech and Debate team will  compete at the Duke Invitational from Oct. 8 to Oct. 9. On Sept. 24-26, the debate team participated in the Jack Howe invitational at California State University of Long Beach and their first tournament of the school year on Sept. 10 where the Screamin’ Eagles hosted an Icebreaker tournament on-campus.

   The Screamin’ Eagles will participate in the two-day Duke Invitational, a national tournament where Gabrielino will face against schools around the country.

   The Jack Howe Memorial Invitational focuses on debate that took place at California State University of Long Beach. Gabrielino’s debate students participated in the tournament and went against school’s from around the country. 

   Students from high schools such as Alhambra, Arcadia, Crescenta Valley, Maranatha, San Marino, along with Jefferson Middle School novices performed in the Icebreaker tournament.

   The top three high school’s placing were Crescenta Valley, Alhambra and Gabrielino.

   “This icebreaker [tournament] to me is [about] bonding with my teammate because it’s randomly partnered sometimes with someone completely new and [you can] break the ice with them,” said sophomore Karina Vargas. 

   Participants were to do three rounds: duo, spar and character debate. Duos were given topics to be performed improvisational, the topics were informative, silly and serious, but depended on the duo’s choosing. 

   “My goal for this event [is] to become comfortable with competing in tournaments,” stated eighth grade Jefferson Middle School student, Breanna Chong. “I will try to accomplish performing in front of others on the spot.”

   The Screamin’ Eagles and the other school’s were assigned rooms at random all around campus. They were to score their peers on slips in order to rank themselves. 

   “[This tournament is] a bunch of improv so I will learn more about thinking on my feet and more about how to present myself in front of other people,” stated junior Jasmine Bonilla.   

   Duo was the first round, students were given 5 to 7 minutes of preparation with a prompt such as “two friends make a cake for the first time” or “two parents play video games.” The performance is 5 minutes maximum with time signals in order for the performers to make the best out of the time they had.

   Second was spar, the duo was to pick a topic and debate with another team, some topics that were included were “salt is better than sugar” or “doctors are better than lawyers.” The process was preparation, the affirmation duo asserting their arguments along with the negation duo, there is a questioning, and rebuttals. 

   The last round was character debate which was similar to the second round but the debaters had to talk in character. The process was done with the topics being chosen on pieces of paper and they would debate with spoken accents and animated hand movements. 

   “I felt really confident about my performances,” said junior Christopher Torres. “My main takeaway from the tournament was how enjoyable…and rewarding speech can be when you put everything into a performance.”