Amid rousing cheers, the Herbert Morrison Technical High School team of Nailah Allen, Benjamin Scott and Matthew Douglas claimed bragging rights as winners of the JPS Foundation’s inaugural Power Up Energy Club debate competition finals. 

The persuasive arguments presented by the teenage trio ultimately trumped their rivals Joshua Atkins, Brianna Thomas, and Kimani Leslie from the St. Andrew-based Excelsior High. 

The wrap-up of the Foundation’s debate contest—which ran for a five-week stretch around the country—culminated inside a capacity-filled lecture theatre at the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the West Indies, Mona in late April.

Only just managing to contain her euphoria mere moments after the winning announcement came, an ear-to-ear smiling Allen from Herbert Morrison shared: “This is honestly quite phenomenal to me as this is my first debate competition and I won.”  

The 17-year-old, who joined her school’s Energy Club four months ago, found her exposure to the debating world both enlightening and a character-builder.

“Some of my team members had previous experience. They helped and guided me through the process, as did our coach and my teachers,” she said. 

In preparation for the oratorial grand finals, Allen explained the plan of action devised by the team.

“At first, when we saw the motion, we were like ‘Oh boy, this is so intricate’ so we thought about what stance we could take. We had to define what it meant and decide. Then, we were predicting the possibilities of what the opposition would bring. Luckily, we were prepared and able to tackle it.”

For their first-place finish opposing the motion of electricity theft and the onus of responsibility on who should pay, the Herbert Morrison team won J$200,000.

Their coach Althea Reid-Douglas was awarded $50,000. On cloud nine after her team’s triumph, winning coach Reid-Douglas raved: “We are very happy, particularly so, because we [Herbert Morrison] have not built a culture of debating. For us to have done so well as the competition’s inaugural winners, I am really pleased.”

The educator, also a sixth form coordinator at the St. James institution, informed that in addition to the JPS Foundation’s school debate, the relatively new team had also entered the Burger King-sponsored National Tourism Debate, and finished in third place.

“We knew our weaknesses coming out of that debate. So we worked on our engagement first, and for the JPS Foundation finals, we knew we had to tighten up in relation to our public speaking qualities and the kind of micro-debating that was required.”

While victory eluded Excelsior High, team member Kimani Leslie successfully cinched the title of best debater in the finals.  “I was actually astounded by that win,” he admitted. “How do I feel about us coming second? I am grateful. It means a lot and shows that we have been putting in a level of work. We have been grinding and working assiduously.”  

Just one hour before these JPS Power Up Energy Club debate playoffs, Leslie and his teammates had competed in the National Tourism Debates at the Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica (PBCJ) studios in Half-Way Tree.  

“As we were preparing for both speeches for the two competitions, we started writing the speeches two days before the actual competitions as posited by our advisor. We were up until three in the morning, trying to fix the speeches,” the top debater revealed.

Proud of her team’s penultimate placement in the JPS Foundation’s event, Excelsior coach Flavia Allen declared: “We are eagles and we only train eagles and we always go for the highest which is first place. Nonetheless, second place for a new debating club that was launched last month is excellent. I am so proud of all the debaters, and the club members, the teachers, the principal and all the people on the outside who gave us advice in the different ways on how to approach the motion.” 

For their well-articulated efforts, the runner-up Excelsior team pocketed J$100,000, and coach Allen, $25,000. 

Meanwhile, heaping praises on all the day’s debaters, Jermaine Barrett, founder and executive director of the Jamaica Association for Debate and Empowerment (JADE)—which adjudicated and assisted the JPS contest in getting up and running—said “It is remarkable that we have been able to cultivate such talent, such oratory, such critical thinking, such persuasiveness among students who are largely STEM students.”

Continuing, Barrett argued: “There is a sort of stereotypical view of students who study engineering, mathematics and so forth, of not being articulate and here it is, we have seen nothing could be farther from the truth.”