Scotch College

Unquestionably a great year for Scotch debaters

It has been a magnificent year for our debaters, with an unprecedented five teams going through the season undefeated and representing our region in the state finals. Congratulations to the finals teams:

A1 (Year 12): Nicholas Jane, Robert Pallot, Ashish Sharma, Nicholas Tam and Andrew Trinh

A2 (Year 12): Jonathan Chia, Thomas Sutherland, Oliver Waters, Benjamin Wong

B1 (Year 11): Conrad Banasik, Henry Hedinger, James Leung, Jun Qu

B4 (Year 11): Thomas Ho, Yash Vather, Alistair Meallin, James Purcell

C3 (Year 10): Francis Chan, Josh Ch’ng, Stephen Moore, Minh-Quan Nguyen

The B1 team made the semi-finals (the top four teams in the state) and the A1s went all the way through to the state grand final. The pressure was on the A1s, as the last time Scotch won an A grade grand final was in 1985. However, Melbourne High School was just too good on the night, and convinced the adjudicators ‘That the international community should militarily intervene in Iran’.

Individual achievements

The ‘Swannie’ awards go to speakers with the highest average speaker score, having completed at least three debates, in each grade and region. There are thousands of students in the competition, with only 100 speakers receiving awards. Scotch speakers received two ‘Swannies’: Will Robertson (C grade) won a best speaker award in all five of his debates, and Nicholas Tam (A grade) won the regional ‘Swannie’, and then went on to be awarded the ‘Swannie’ for best A grade debater in the state. Congratulations to both boys. In Nick’s final year at Scotch his debating achievements have become legendary. As well as winning the state ‘Swannie’:

he achieved the highest average score in the finals series (77.08) and was a member of the A grade grand final team.

he was a grand finalist in the British Parliamentary competition (for the last two years), and he was a member of the Victorian schools team (for two years)

Nick has a formidable intellect with the enviable ability to listen to others, formulate arguments, draw conclusions and articulate his team’s case with precision. He can readily seize on any lapses in the opposition’s case or logic. We hope to see Nick return to Scotch debating as a coach and mentor in 2007. Congratulations to all the boys who represented Scotch debating in 2006. Now let’s see if we can further improve on the wonderful results in 2007!