The Oak Park High School Speech and Debate team attended the annual Tri-County Forensic League Debate State Qualifier on Feb. 21. After a month of preparation and a day of competition, three OPHS students qualified in Lincoln-Douglas debate and two qualified in Public Forum.

Lincoln-Douglas debate consists of two individual debaters arguing on resolutions about current affairs. Through evidence, statistics and philosophy, debaters are tasked with the objective of attacking their opponent’s argument and defending their own.

In a Lincoln-Douglas debate round, debaters begin by presenting their case, then spend the rest of the time rebutting their opponent’s arguments. This includes multiple cross-examination periods, when debaters can ask strategic questions that poke holes to the other side. 

The 2026 January and February Lincoln-Douglas debate topic was “Resolved: The possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.”

“I did a lot of research on what the topic was,” Dasari said. “I would meet with friends that were also doing the tournament, and we would create rebuttals, flesh out our arguments and practice saying our speeches out loud.” 

The accomplishment of qualifying for states made all the hard work feel worthwhile, according to the debaters. 

“I was definitely really happy and it made me realize that hard work does pay off,” Mouzaya said. “I’ve been doing this for four years, I’m finally going to states and I’m super excited.”

The team is open to all grade levels and provides students with opportunities to learn and improve their public speaking as well as argumentation skills.

“The skills I’ve learned from debate are going to be useful, not just in high school, but for the rest of my life,” Shreedhar said. “Even if you’re not on the team, I would strongly urge all grades to try out for the speech and debate team, and engage in public speaking, because it’s just so important for everything.” 

Public Forum debate is a prepared debate where students work in pairs of two to debate the topic. The 2026 February Public Forum debate topic was “Resolved: The Federal Trade Commission should establish a federal regulatory framework for sports betting.”

The tournament works by using the number of ballots received to determine if a debater will advance to states. There are four preliminary rounds, and in each round, two judges give one ballot each.

“If each debater receives a certain number of ballots from judges in the preliminary rounds, they will automatically qualify for states,” Yarlagadda said. “In Public Forum, if a debater earns at least seven of eight ballots, they will automatically qualify for states. However, if a debater earns five ballots and loses three, or six ballots and loses two, they must compete in a fifth round. The winner of that fifth round advances to states.”

Debate is a challenging extracurricular activity that requires immense preparation and dedication. Sometimes, not all things go according to plan because of the subjective nature of the activity, which can leave debaters feeling hesitant about their performance.

“At first, I was sure we didn’t qualify because of the first round going very poorly and the placement of the other students around us, who I thought were significantly better than us,” Rohatgi said. “I was really pumped when we qualified and was thankful that the entire day’s experience didn’t go to waste. I’m super excited to continue to compete at the state tournament.”

The California High School Speech Association Championship is set to take place on April 17 in Northern California at James Logan High School, with eight speech members joining alongside the state tournament on April 18.

Check out the seven speech students who qualified for states in this story.