On Jan. 18 the debate team represented Allen with 22 members competing at the Denton Guyer tournament.

Senior Blake Seaman, president of the Speech and Debate club, won first place in Foreign Extemporaneous Speaking and third place in Congressional Debate, securing his place in two events at the state tournament in March. Also, freshman Catherine Chen took third place in Domestic Extemporaneous speaking and became the debate team’s highest performing freshman.

However, despite the trophies brought home by these two, the club was disappointed by the overall outcome.

“This whole year has been marked by us getting progressively better and more skilled and this tournament was a bit of a backtrack,” Seaman said.

However the lack of performance may have had other factors involved.

“Generally, people try to have a well-organized debate tournament but it’s really hard with so many people doing so many different things,” said sophomore Grace Zhang, VP Congress of the Speech and Debate club.

This lack of organization meant no trophies for some regular debaters, like Saurabh Sharma.

“Initially we thought [Sharma] had made finals and gone on to Congress, but because of a clerical error, the tournament officials had to cut more people out,” Seaman said.

Regardless of not having his team perform up to par, Seaman believes this tournament did not significantly harm the team’s reputation because six of the 22 made it to the out rounds.

“There’s always a ‘give a little, take a little’ with the reputation of Allen,” Seaman said.

This bartering, of sorts, might have been the only thing that sustained the team to the end of the tournament.

“Although not all of us went to finals, a lot of us went to semifinals and we definitely learned very valuable things from just competing and the experience,” Zhang said.