WINNING THE SPOKEN WORD
By Rumyana Mihaylova
On a white and densely foggy Saturday morning, 15 students from the ACS Debate club get on a bus to Montana, ready to compete at the Northwest Regional BEST Tournament.
Some kids sleepily listened to music on their headphones, while others practiced speeches and discussed debate motions with their teammates. As we leave Sofia, the bus windows frame landscapes that look a lot like cutout paper animation. Religious tolerance, government healthcare for people who choose not to be vaccinated, and the prospects of entertainers for political careers are some of the themes students examine on the bus. We arrive at the tournament venue Peter Bogdan FLHS in Montana right on time for the opening ceremony. Against a running Snapchat with messages from the speech and debate community in Bulgaria, the current manager of the BEST Foundation, Anna Fuselier, greets the crowd and announces the start of a weekend of spoken word challenges. We are so pumped!
For ACS students who are accustomed to winning debate awards at national tournaments, the Northwest regional with its 100 participants is a chance to polish their speaking skills and get some practice. ACS (Boyana Atanasova, Gabriela Ivanova and Kristiya Navushtanova) competes against ACS (Seda Radoykova, Ana-Maria Markovska and Alexandra Zidarova) at the finals, and the team coach Andrey Mirchev watches the debate with a critical eye. It is clear that our kids have aced the game, let’s not deprive them of constructive feedback! Boyana, Gabriela and Kristiya win first place, leaving the second place to their friends Seda, Ana-Maria and Alexandra. Then the members of the two winning ACS debate teams congratulate each other with a hug!
As for me, my love for the spoken word and creativity keeps me on my toes when I watch Boyana Atanasova and Iva Valcheva deliver their speeches on “Religious Intolerance” and “The Cons of Being Unimpressed” respectively. First place for Iva, second place for Boyana, you girls deserve a round of applause!
And if you think that our first and second places in debate and oratory are quite an achievement, let me present you with an exhaustive list of sweepstakes: Individual Speaker Award (Boyana Atanassova), Sportsmanship Award (the debate team of Seda Radoykova, Ana-Maria Markovska and Alexandra Zidarova), second place in Prose Interpretation (Gabriela Ivanova), sixth place in Prose Interpretation (Kristiya Navushtanova), fourth place in Poetry Interpretation (Mila Marcheva), and a Large School division award for the whole team.
It is time for a bus loaded with happy speech and debate champions to return to Sofia for a new week of classes. So many bright smiles on a foggy Sunday evening!
