MHS Speech/Debate opens fall season at Mabank competition


MARSHALL, Texas – The Marshall Maverick Speech and Debate team opened the fall season this past weekend by competing in the Mabank Speech and Debate Angel Invitational held at Mabank High School.

Marshall’s Alexis Alexander, Deshona Jernigan, Haley Hurd and Joseph Maglaris represented Marshall in Cross-Examination Debate.

Hurd and Maglaris finished in sixth place out the 24 team in the competition, while Alexander and Jernigan finished 18th overall.

“This was the first weekend of the year and I am excited in the direction our policy debate group is headed,” said MHS Debate coach Kenneth Adcock. “It’s a great start to the new season.”

DID YOU KNOW: Debate is the University Interscholastic League’s longest-running contest, dating back to 1910. A small group of debate coaches met in Abilene and enthusiastically began an interscholastic forensic program to motivate their students and provide them with a practical application for the skills they were developing. It was then that UIL was born. Ten teams representing ten divisions of the state competed in the first state tournament. Over one hundred years later, the UIL Cross-Examination Policy Debate State Meet is celebrated as the largest high school debate tournament in the nation.

At the first state meet, educators voted to add declamation as a state-qualifying contest. Since that time, the League has expanded speaking competition to include two debate contests, two public speaking contests and two oral performance contests and congress. Thousands of students from across the state of Texas compete each year in Cross-Examination Debate, Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Congress, Extemporaneous Informative Speaking, Extemporaneous Persuasive Speaking, Prose Interpretation and Poetry Interpretation.

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