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St Thomas’ Willoughby win debating competition

 

On Friday 18 June, the Year 5 debating team from St Thomas’ Catholic School, Willoughby defeated Loreto Kirribilli in the grand final of the Independent Schools Debating Association (ISDA) 2010 debating competition. 

The three adjudicators awarded the win unanimously to St Thomas’ and stated that this was the ‘best ever’ standard of competition witnessed at primary level. Ironically the team won the debate by arguing that there was too much emphasis on winning.

The team of Aishling Cohen, Olivia Carmody, Alex Dadich and Juliette Byak were presented with the ‘Dot Kellet Memorial Shield’ which will be held for one year at St Thomas’ until the 2011 grand final.

Congratulations also go to Hannah Colgan and Sienna Woodward, who participated in the round robin section of the competition and contributed in an important way to the team’s progression to the finals.

St Thomas’ along with Corpus Christi Catholic School, St Ives, St John’s Catholic School, Narraweena and St Martin’s Catholic School, Davidson are the only systemic schools entered in the ISDA competition.

“This is a wonderful achievement for a little local Catholic school,” said Principal Jenny McKeown.

The victory represents a culmination of 12 weeks of continuous debating against the very best independent schools in the state.  An extraordinary amount of effort went into each debate with the topic being released on the Monday morning before the debate and the students then researching, planning, developing a line of argument, pre-empting an opposing strategy, developing speeches, rehearsing and then debating the topic with very competitive teams.