Each Friday evening since mid-Term 1, several of the Year 7 boys have dedicated a huge amount of their time to debating. They meet each week during their lunch time and then debate against other schools on Friday evenings. Earlier in the year it was in the Fed Cup and ISDA competitions while this term has seen the start of the official GPS competition.

Mr Mark Halsted and Ms Donna Curtis have been working hard with the boys and this evening, when asked about how the boys went, Ms Curtis replied “we came second place in both debates but the boys did us proud, tried their best and really are lovely boys”.

One of our debaters is Finn Waugh (Balmain) and below is a short report that he wrote after tonight’s debate.

The debate against Sydney Grammar was never going to be an easy one. Our team, consisting of Matthew Sally (West Pennant Hills), Fred Maher (Cherrybrook), myself and Felix Habib (Balmain) lost the coin toss and it was decided that we would negate the topic “That We Should Ban Video Games That Glorify Crime”. We felt that this topic may have favoured the affirmative but we were certainly going to give it a good shake.

After a constructive 45 minute preparation time the debate began. After an intimidating speech by the opposition Matthew rose and spoke very well. The Grammar second speaker rebutted our case expertly and we knew that things would be tough. Fred Maher tried his best to give us the advantage and again, did a wonderful job. Their third speaker again refuted our case exceptionally well. At the end of my own speech, with all speakers having had their say our team thought that we were in with a shot at victory. Unfortunately the adjudicator disagreed and gave the debate to the affirmative.

It was a good experience for everyone involved and although we lost to Grammar, we know that they are one of the best debating schools in NSW and if we can defeat the rest of the schools starting with Sydney High next week we are still in with a chance to win the GPS competition.

Photo:  Back row – Fred Maher, Rory McHugh (Pennant Hills), Matthew Sally, Finn Waugh. Front row – Felix Habib, Nick Jessup (Lane Cove) and Nathan Calingao (Lane Cove). Absent – Alec Mackinnon (North Bondi)

For many, one of the hardest things that they have to do in life is speak in front of large groups. I know many very successful people who can not handle the thought of getting up and speaking in front of others. What makes this even harder is when the group you are speaking to is a group of your peers.

Today, we saw six Year 7 boys take up this challenge in the finals of our oratory competition. Each boy in Year 7 prepared and were judged on a speech in their English class. Each teacher then chose one representative from their class to go into these finals

I was very luck to be invited to be an adjudicator at this competition and I was accompanied by Mr Ross Tarlinton (Headmaster) and Mr Paul Brooks (Director of Teaching and Learning). In speaking with these men both during the competition and afterwards, we all agreed that the quality of speakers was superb.

Today’s final included the boys doing their prepared speech and then after that being given 1 minute to prepare a 1 minutes impromptu speech. In particular, this second challenge was a huge ask … remember … in front of 150 other boys!

A huge congratulations to all six of the boys who represented their classes. They really did a fabulous job.

There does, however, have to be a winner in such a competition and while it was extremely close between the boys, full credit has to go to Matthew Toomey (Lane Cove) who won the competition for 2012. He spoke about his hobby of cricket in his prepared speech and showed great creativity in his impromptu.

Second place went to Ethan Annesley (Tennyson Point) who spoke about Table Tennis while third place went to Lachlan Champley (Umina Beach) who spoke about the Wests Tigers. These boys were exceptionally good but got pipped at the post by Matthew.

A big congratulations to all the boys in Year 7 who each gave it their best in their clsses.

Photo 1: Alec Mackinnon (North Bondi)

Photo 2: Matthew Toomey (Lane Cove)

Photo 3: Our six finalists, Joe Lawman (Seaforth), Luke Hodgson (Ryde), Matthew Toomey (Lane Cove), Lachlan Champley (Umina Beach), Alec Mackinnon (North Bondi) and Ethan Annesley (Tennyson Point).