On Sept. 19 and 20, the Bishop Gorman speech and debate team participated in the Shadow Angel Tournament where new students to the speech and debate team competed for the first time.
The Shadow Angel speech and debate tournament is broken into two days, one called the shadow day and the other called the angel day. The shadow day is where JV and varsity speech and debate members perform while new speech and debate members watch. After watching the JV and varsity members perform, the novices feel more ready to compete on the angle day, where they are given the opportunity to do so. They perform while JV and varsity judge them.
Almost everyone that participated in the Shadow Angel tournament performed in Original Oratory. Original Oratory or OO is a ten minute memorized speech where competitors can speak about any topic they want. When asked how he chose his topic, Hafsa Mujtaba ‘29 stated, “To choose my topic, I actually just thought about what problems or issues I had in my daily life as well as what others experienced throughout their daily lives.”
Leading up to the tournament, participants had to prepare their speeches by writing and memorizing. Nicholas Wentz ‘29 said, “I prepared for my speech by trying to memorize my main points in each paragraph, ensuring that I understand the explanation for the facts, and then I ran through it a bit to practice.”
The shadow day gives the less experienced members of the team a chance to watch the more seasoned competitors and potentially take away something from their performances. The novices can use these viewings to make adjustments to their speeches and their performances by observing the feedback given on the speeches that they watched. Wentz expressed that he “really liked people who didn’t make it obvious when they forgot some of their facts/explanation,” and he went on to explain, “Some people would visibly stop, maybe say something like ‘sorry’ to the audience or talk to themselves and say ‘come on’ and that sounded super weird and unnatural compared to people who would pause for a second or two.”
After the shadow day, the novices got to compete on the angel day. Some students performed for the first time ever on this day. This was a good opportunity for the novices to get to perform and get feedback from varsity members. While performing, Audrey Ware ‘29 stated, “I was extremely nervous while presenting my speech. I was shaking and sweating, but when I was done it felt really really good because I knew that I had done well and that I had a great speech.”
The Shadow Angel Tournament was a good experience for new members of the speech and debate team to compete for the first time and get feedback to improve for their next tournament. The speech and debate team is set to compete in their next tournament on Oct. 3 and 4 at the Sunrise Mountain Tournament.
