Barstow’s debate squad spends Halloween weekend proving opponents wrong in Iowa.

There is no better way to spend a long weekend than dressing up like Mario Kart characters and yelling at each other. The debate team did just that during Halloween weekend and persevered through unexpected circumstances. 

There were three teams from Barstow competing in the tournament: two in varsity and one in novice. Out of the six preliminary rounds, freshmen Rohan Thomas and Ezra Jacobs won five rounds, advancing to elimination rounds at their first tournament! They advanced all the way through to the finals, where they lost on a 2-1 vote. 

While they made it through to finals, Thomas enjoyed the semis the most, stating, “Semifinals was probably my favorite round; it felt like it was more spent actually debating, unlike the other rounds where everyone just explains their own thing.” At the end of the tournament, Thomas and Jacobs both got speaker awards. Thomas placed 5th overall, and Jacobs placed 8th. Thomas also added, “One of my favorite parts was the hotels, however, I enjoyed the tournament a lot.”

In the varsity division, juniors Sri Pattabiraman and Jayden Sampat went 3-3, placing 32nd and 31st, respectively. Team Ava Levin (‘24) and Tyler Bauman (‘25) went 1-5, but placed in the top half for speaker awards, taking 15th and 20th respectively. Neither team advanced to eliminations, but Bauman says, “We certainly had interesting rounds but they helped us understand a little more about the intricacies of debate.”

This tournament was a great experience for the students to get to know each other and really build off of each other in rounds. Levin enjoyed the tournament, stating, “It was nice being able to travel with the team again. It was fewer people on this trip so I got to bond with the people on this trip more closely. I’m really proud of how all our teams did at this tournament and I really look forward to what we do in the future.”