Shaylee Foord likes to argue. She's pretty good at it too.
Shaylee and classmate Amber Dechief represented Saskatchewan at the Junior National Debate Championships in Calgary last weekend for students in grades 7 to 9.
The Grade 9 duo from Estevan Comprehensive School faced off against some of the strongest young debaters from across Canada.
Despite it being Shaylee and Amber's first year in debating, Lori Cline Flath, ECS debate society adviser, thought the pair did exceptionally well at the national level, against some very experienced opposition.
"I would say probably 95 per cent of the debaters at nationals are taking a class in debate. They're often privately tutored, and many of them are either home-schooled or from private schools and have been debating since Grade 5," Cline Flath said. "So, as first year debaters - and for the fact that we're an extracurricular club, [Shaylee and Amber] did very well and were very evenly matched."
On Friday, in their first two rounds of competition, the teams took part in "prepared topic" debate. In this type of debate, competitors are given the topic well in advance, in order to prepare their arguments. This year's prepared topic was to argue the statement, "a strong dictatorship is better than a weak democracy."
Shaylee and Amber fell just short in both of their opening matches, losing to a team from Nova Scotia and then one from Ontario
On Saturday, the second day of nationals, all teams went through four rounds of "impromptu topic" debate. In this format, debaters are given a topic on the spot and have only 30 minutes to prepare their argument, and are not allowed to use any reference material, except for a dictionary.
Shaylee said competitors were given topics ranging from same sex schools, to whether political correctness does more harm than good.
In their first debate of the day, the Estevan duo scored the most points they got in the whole tournament, but still came up short, losing to a team that eventually made it to the quarter-finals.
Shaylee and Amber lost another close match to a team from Nova Scotia, before winning in their fifth debate against a pair of girls from Ontario.
The Estevan girls went on to lose their final match of the tournament, but Shaylee said she thought she and her partner performed well in the last debate.
Although, they did not qualify for the final day of competition, Shaylee was happy with the team's results.
"We did well on points ... better than we did all year," she said.
In addition to debating, the competitors were treated to entertainment, including a night of bowling and a day trip to Banff.
Shaylee said she really enjoyed the trip to Banff, and was happy with the whole experience.
"We met a lot of really interesting people: people who have been debating for a long time, and people from all over the world," said Shaylee. "They had a lot of really good judges [at nationals] who gave us a lot of good pointers and we learned a lot."
Next year, Estevan will host the junior nationals. Although Shaylee and Amber will no longer qualify as juniors, Shaylee said the tournament in Calgary gave her an idea of what it will take to help plan for the tournament next year.
