After a wild first day, the team came ready for a long day two. The entire competition was held in a massive hotel called the Park Inn. This venue held its own fair share of challenges. Especially the challenge of verticality. During the competition, the only way to get from one floor to another was to take an elevator. There were 8 elevators and 300 students (and many non-debater guests) so vertical transportation quickly bogged down. This resulted in many competitors practicing current events speeches in packed elevators. It’s always good to have an audience, especially a captive one.
All four of us began the day with some extemporaneous speaking (extemp). We had 30 minutes to prepare and memorize a 7-minute speech on some current event issue. We answered current events questions from “Are German Cars a ‘Threat to National Security’?” to “Is Germany ready to deal with a new migrant crisis?”. There were a lot of questions about German politics and a lot of answers as well. Russell’s After Dinner Speaking speech on Artificial Intelligence and Stephen’s Persuasive speech on Private Prisons were the other events the team competed in that day.
The second day was the final day of the tournament and several members our team made it to out rounds. Russell was one of the four that qualified for IPDA semi-finals while Dekysos came close to making semis at fifth place. Russell won his semi- final debate on a contentious Brexit question but lost the final on a difficult Facebook regulation topic and placed second overall out of 64 competitors! Deksyos also broke to semi-finals in both extemporaneous and impromptu speaking. He went on to get second overall in extemporaneous speaking. After another long day of performing the team had a quick German dinner and headed off to sleep.
