North Harford’s Speech and Debate team has swept tournaments over the last three years. The team grew in membership significantly in the 2012-2013 school year, and has covered numerous events ever since.

The Speech and Debate team has been coached by english teacher Joanna Dallam for the last three years ever since former NH employee and coach Amanda Miljour moved back to Michigan.

“I joined Speech and Debate my freshman year with Ms. Miljour, so it was strange at first to have a new coach sophomore year,” said senior captain Tyler Ziegler. “But Ms. Dallam is a lot more involved. She’s engaged in the competition, and interested in our pieces and arguments.”

Each event in speech and debate features a different form of public speaking and requires a unique skill set and talent. The speech portion involves a presentation by one or more students that is judged against a similar type of presentation by others in a round of competition. Speech events range from limited preparation events that require extensive knowledge of current events (extemporaneous speaking) to dramatic and humorous interpretation, which challenge students to find powerful moments in literature and recreate them for an audience, according to speechanddebate.org.

“I joined my sophomore year because it was a good way to meet people and it looks great on college applications,” said senior member Lauren Dorn. “My event is dramatic interpretation, since I’m so into drama and it allows me to act, but you don’t have to memorize anything. It’s so fun and it’s cool to meet other people and see their monologues.

The debate end involves an individual or a team of debaters working to convince a judge that his or her side of a resolution is more valid. Students in debate come to thoroughly understand both sides of the resolution, having researched each extensively, and learn to think critically about every argument that could be made on each side according to speechanddebate.org.

“I joined my sophomore year; my parents told me that I needed to be more involved at school, and that debate was an option because I’m good at arguing,” said senior captain Hannah Gross. “Lincoln- Douglas debate requires a lot of preparation, you can’t make up stuff on the spot. For me, it’s a challenge, but it’s definitely helped me become a better public speaker.”

So far this year, the team has already seen a lot of success at the seven competitions that have been held so far.

“Overall, the team has been great,” said Ziegler. “I myself have gotten blue ribbons in Lincoln-Douglas debate every meet. Parker [Bolstad] and Adam [Parks] get blue ribbons every time in team debate. Bemb et. al. (Katie Bemb, Rachael Griffin, Juliana Giro, and Nick Giannasca) have gotten blue ribbons every time. Even some of our new guys have gotten ribbons this year, which is almost unheard of.”