Columba College students Emily Roy, 17, and Beth Elder, 16, and Trinity Catholic College student Che McGavern, 17, make up the Otago Debating Team.
On Monday night, the trio were put through their paces during the New Zealand Schools Debating Championship final — and their hard work paid off when they won.
The final took place in the legislative chambers of Parliament.
Che said all three were sent to an MP’s office to prepare. However, taking in the office scenery and having a snoop around were not on the agenda.
‘‘I think Chris Luxon himself could have walked past me and I wouldn’t have even noticed.
‘‘There was too much stress.’’
He said preparing for the debate involved doing many practice debates, researching a wide range of topics and reviewing example debates.
Emily said debate topics ranged from developing African nations forming resource cartels, to feminism, New Zealand values, civics being taught in schools and how to obtain evidence for a legal trial.
Having researched quite a bit about rare earth minerals also came in surprisingly handy for the trip.
‘‘Our team dynamic is really good ... by the end of round 7 we had all figured out exactly what our roles were — we worked together in order to create the ideas.’’
She said the trio had an advantage over other teams because they had all worked together last year, which was rare for a debating team.
Beth said debating had helped them in their day-to-day life by making them confident speakers and helping them think critically and be able to lay out a debate successfully.
All three did not use cue cards for speeches in English class: they just stood at the front and went for it.
Beth said while they had definitely worked hard, their success came down to their coaches.
‘‘Our coaches are actually just University of Otago debate club members .. . we would be nothing without the coaches.
‘‘They’ve done a good job with getting Otago to be one of the big players. Previously debate was dominated by Aucklanders — now, Otago’s won two out of the last three national debates.’’
During the tournament, Emily was selected for the New Zealand team and will be heading to Kenya next month for the World Schools Debating Championships.
Beth was selected as a reserve.
