Schaumburg debate team claims first state title

For the first time in school history, Schaumburg High School has captured the Illinois High School Association State Debate title.

The Schaumburg team won its first state championship during a weekend competition at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington.

Senior Kali Froh led the team into the final round, where she beat Emanuel Dallas of Evanston Township High School to earn the title in the category of Lincoln-Douglas debate.

“I cried, I jumped for joy,” said team coach and English teacher Darrell Robin. “She (Froh) represented Schaumburg High School in the final round, but it was a team effort.”

The topic this year for the Lincoln-Douglas debate, which focuses on a philosophical topic, was “Resolved: Targeted killing is a morally permissible foreign policy tool.” All competitors, including four Schaumburg students, had to prepare to debate both affirmative and negative aspects of the issue.

“It's like a war inside your head, but it also creates open-mindedness,” Robin said.

Schaumburg also had eight students who participated in the category of public forum debate and 10 students who competed in the category of Congressional debate.

After five 45-minute preliminary debates, three Schaumburg debaters advanced into the elimination rounds for Lincoln-Douglas. Teams that qualify for the elimination rounds must have high records of winning arguments in debates and high speaker points. Because many teams could be tied with their winning record, students with higher speaker points advance.

Students with the highest speaker points earn a spot on the All-State Debate Team. Three of the ten students on the Lincoln-Douglas All-State team were from Schaumburg, including senior Palak Patel, who took 7th place; senior Aru Singh, who finished 4th; and Froh, who won first place and was named the captain of the All-State Debate Team.

The individual accomplishments are distinctive because sometimes teams that win the entire tournament do not always place students on the All-State Debate Team, Robin said.

He added that seeing all the hard work his students put into debate, with many of them practicing every day after school since September, reaffirms for him that debate is truly a sport.

“There's an offensive, there's a defensive, there's a winner, there's a loser,” he said. “The academic sports are just as rigorous as the athletic sports.”

Besides Robin, the team also is coached by Carl Schwartz, a former debate state champion from Elk Grove High School; art teacher Colleen Singer; English teacher Kate Ksiazek; and Sam Haque, a former Schaumburg High School student and debater.