Trinity Catholic College cleaned the house winning the junior and senior grades in the Dunedin Schools’ Debating Competition.
The senior team won their grade and the junior team won their grade for the first time since 1992 after beating another trinity team in the semifinal.
"It’s been a long time in the making for us," senior team member Che McGivern said.
He began debating at Trinity when there was only him and his two friends doing it.
A few years later, the school had three teams.
"It’s just really nice to see they’re all succeeding."
He said his younger peers were a lot better than he was at their age.
The school’s debating style was a lot more "off-the-cuff" than the other schools’.
"For us it’s a lot more about approaching the situation with a degree of logic and trying to solve a problem."
Their practices consisted more of rehearsal debates with each other as opposed to oratory drills and exercises.
As a result, across the board, the Trinity debaters performed well in the competition as strong, emotive speakers.
Junior team one debater Ziva Curtis said she had learned a lot from her fellow raconteur Che.
"We just have to listen real hard and create something from our minds."
Junior team opening debater Benjamin Fischer won the best speaker award at the competition even though his team lost the semifinal to the other junior Trinity team.
Benjamin said he was proud that another Trinity team won the competition.
He said it was a really good experience for him to speak in front of an audience.
