An exciting Grand Final in the Inter-House Debating Competition...

Lyon has been trying its hardest to win the debate title for three years now. When each of us joined in our respective years, Lyon hadn't won a single debate. This changed in 2017 when we beat Old House and won Lyon House’s first ever debate. One year later, we managed to beat Old and Priory to bolster our hopes for the next competition. This year, we started by debating against New House. Although we lost, it wasn't as disastrous as it seemed because it was only a Preliminary Round. We then went up against Arion in our other preliminary and performed well, placing us in 5^th position with our next opponent being Priory. Following this contest, we faced our toughest opponent of the competition so far, Wellesley, who we heard had ruthless 4^th Formers who were very strong in rebuttal and their main speech. Having seen them debate, we were impressed by their style and strategy. But we were able to progress into The Final and onto our greatest challenge of our debating careers: the seemingly unbeatable Blackford. We prepared with great diligence over the week before with Isaac and Llewelyn learning their speeches off by heart and Alex planning the starts of his rebuttal. We had high hopes. We had already imagined ourselves as the victors. 

Our plan was to beat them on style and strategy as those were the categories where we believed our strengths lay. After a long, nerve wracking judging process, the scores were announced. We had beaten them on style, drawn on content and beaten them on strategy. All three of us immediately felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders as we had managed to win and to be named as the champions of the 2020 debating competition. We were all very happy with what we had achieved over these last three years, but we were especially pleased to be crowned champions in Alex's final year. This really meant a great deal to him as he had been in the debating team since he had joined in 2015 and put in hours upon hours of work into each and every debate. Now, it’s up to Isaac and Llewelyn to try and carry on the Lyon House debating success next year when Alex has left and we hope that we can feel the same emotions of delight, satisfaction and triumph again.

Alex, Isaac and Llewelyn - The Lyon Debating Team

Having watched the Oxford Union debate in the past, this school final made for an easy comparison. Blackford proposed the motion ‘This House believes Globalisation has had its’ day’ and argued that it negatively affected economies, it homogenised societies and had failed to ‘drag people out of poverty’. Inevitably, Covid -19 was discussed by both teams. Particularly thoughtful was the point made that globalisation encouraged the recent move to more extreme right wing politics. With several team members speaking without notes and engaging the audience with a lively delivery, both teams’ sophisticated argument was impressive. To engage, Issac began his 4 minute piece with questions to the audience, which had the effect of energising interest. Clever points of information from Lyon, meant Blackford’s timing went astray and that cost them important strategic points. Added to that were a few hesitations from Blackford. This enabled Lyon to sweep in with a close victory of 44 points against Blackford’s 42. Both teams should be immensely proud of the high standard reached.

Alison Grant - Deputy Head

Flickr album: Inter-House Debating - The Final - 7th March 2020 | Height: auto | Theme: Default

@KingsBruton
Well done to the Lyon Debate Team! A excellent final against Blackford this morning. Very proud of everyone who represented the side this year! A close victory and an extremely humbled Housemaster! pic.twitter.com/vQAgLT9YLR

— Lyon House (@KSBLyonHouse) March 9, 2020