Parrish Community High

Published Date – January 8, 2025  

 After weeks of preparation, the Parrish Community High School Speech and Debate team competed in their first FGCCFL regional competition at North Port High School on Saturday, December 13.  

The team who had competed consisted of: 

 Of the five categories, they competed in two of them: Public Forum and Oral Interpretation.  

Public Forum is a debate category where 2-vs-2 team debates focus on current events using a structured format with speeches, crossfires, and summaries, judged on clarity, logic, and evidence, requiring debaters to prepare both sides of a resolution.  

This December, the competition resolution was: “The United States federal government should require technology companies to provide lawful access to encrypted communications.”

The debate students were expected to thoroughly research both sides of the resolution and were assessed on how effectively they can argue both the affirmative and negate positions. The judging was focused on the quality of their reasoning, use of evidence, and demonstration of knowledge and proficiency in debating each perspective. 

Oral Interpretation is a speech category where a student performs two pieces of published literature (poetry and prose). The goal is to convey the author's message to an audience through a compelling performance.  

The FGCCFL competition structure, following the NSDA rules, consisted of four rounds, with Public Forum having two rounds of each affirmative and negate, and Oral Interpretation having 2 rounds of each Prose and Poetry. Each round they are evaluated and tally the scores to conclude which student(s) are in the top 3.  

For the teams of Public Forum, Floyd partnered with Dickens, and Gonzales partnered with Alkhaldi; with Thach being the only speech contestant.  

Preparation for the competition began six weeks in advance. During this time, the club evaluated who would be attending and who would not; students interested in participating were required to demonstrate their commitment by completing their research and showing proficiency in their chosen event with either performing their speech in person or participating in mock-debates. 

Floyd describes her preparation for the Public Forum category, saying, “I studied throughout a two-week period. This included articles, interviews, and writing a paper on the debate topic.” 

This first competition taught the club valuable knowledge about how the event is organized, how certain events will go, and how to be prepared. 

“I think the competition did well, although we didn’t bring home a trophy, we brought back valuable experience and newfound knowledge,” Floyd says. “I learned a lot from this competition, such as different debate strategies, and how to properly assess your opponent.” 

There is still much to improve within the club following this competition. With the observation of how other schools operate their Speech and Debate teams, several changes are to be implemented to achieve greater success. 

“I plan to implement different debate topics and encourage people to research at home to strengthen their debate strategies,” Floyd says.  

The next FGCCFL competition is Jan 17 at Plant City High School, and the club plans to prepare for it over the winter break, hoping to find success in the competition and to qualify for Grand Finals!