The one day district tournament was held at Ransom Everglades Middle School in Coconut Grove. The Explorers were spread out over six different events throughout the tournament and we came home with two district championships.

 

Leading the way for the Explorers, junior Jesus Capo finished undefeated and claimed the district championship in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Each school is only allowed six entries in each event, and the Explorers qualified all six spots making it a clean sweep for the LD squad. Sophomore Albert Sanchez also went undefeated, finishing in 2nd place. The 3rd spot went to team captain Angel Toro, 4th to Javier Hernandez, 5th to Daniel de Izaguirre and 6th place to Andrew Castro. This is the second year in a row Columbus sweeps the LD division by qualifying 6 out of the 7 possible district spots. 

 

In International Extemporaneous Speaking, we had three novices competing and two of them qualified to the State Championship. In 4th place overall, sophomore Kevin Cejas had an outstanding showing while debating topics such as Pakistani military aid, Turkish operations in Syria, and EU's financial situation in a post Brex-it world. Not too far behind him newcomer Robert Diaz-Velasco had a great tournament finishing in 7th place overall and narrowly making the cut to Orlando. Ernesto Perabeles finished as 2nd alternate in the IX division. 

 

In a new event offered at the State Championship this year, Informative Speaking, speakers are asked to write a ten minute original program and give an informative speech using visual aids. Columbus had three trailblazers who tried this event out and qualified for the state championship. The topics we created varied from errors found in Braille signs and textbooks, to various encounters and attempts made to communicate with extra-terrestrial life, and lastly a critique of consumer culture that has led to the development of trash islands in the Pacific Ocean. The qualifying students were Christopher Aguiar, Jorge Picos, and Armando Hurtado. 

 

Lastly, in Policy Debate, Columbus was uncontested in their district domination of this event and we qualified four teams directly to the state championship. The district champions are Marcos Ortega & Andres Perez. Followed behind the three teams of Sean Buchele and Carlos Gutierrez, Matthew Rockwell and Rafael Casanova, and Aiden Kennedy and Nicholas Sosa. 

 

Though they didn't make it to the state championship, we do want to give a special recognition to senior Cameron Hidalgo, junior Jorge Gutierrez, and sophomore Leonardo Cruz who made a strong effort to place in Student Congress. Their attitude brought a lot of new spirit into the Columbus Debate Team that was very much needed.