The Centre Middle School Debate Warriors show off their awards for the 2014/2015 season in the Birmingham Area Debate League. Shown are (front row) Abbie Reynolds with the Second Place Team Win Point Award, Caroline Lloyd with the Third Place Individual Speaker Award, Magdalen Segura with the Third Place Team Win Percentage Award, and their teammates on the back row, Joel Bishop, Sarah Lloyd, Russell Givens and Alyssa Ingram.
The Birmingham Area Debate League recently held its awards ceremony for the 2014-2015 season and the Centre Middle School Debate Warriors left with some hard-won hardware. The Debate Warriors earned a total of three awards, taking Second Place in the all-important Win Points Category and Third Place in the Winning Percentage Category. Additionally, Caroline Lloyd won the medal for Third Place as an individual speaker.
This is only the second year Centre Middle School has had a debate program. To win these awards, the Centre Team outperformed many larger, well-funded schools from the Birmingham metro area, including Homewood, Clay-Chalkville, and Hewitt-Trussville.
The awards ceremony followed the final competition of the season in which the Debate Warriors notched a 5-1 record for their presentations on the resolution, “The United States federal government should substantially increase taxes on the wealthy.” The three Centre squads supported this proposal in the first round of the evening, and then opposed it in the second round. They won all of their rounds opposing the proposition and all but one of their rounds supporting it.
The competitors for the evening were Joel Bishop, Russell Givens, Alyssa Ingram, Caroline Lloyd, Sarah Lloyd, Abbie Reynolds and Magadalen Segura. Other students who helped the Debate Warriors earn their awards by competing on previous evenings include Maggie Amos, Hannah Hanby, Kaylie Keith, Maya Mackey, and Kaitlyn Meats. The CMS Debate coaching staff consists of Head Coach Chelsea Kinney, along with volunteer coaches Gina Dowdy, Laura Lloyd and Scott Lloyd. The principal of Centre Middle School is Marcia Sewell.
Coach Scott Lloyd observed, “These are smart kids and they have worked hard all year to get to this point. At the start of the year, they set the goal of bringing home an award, and they brought home three! They deserve to feel pride over these accomplishments, and we are proud of them.”