Greenway Cup Victory
On Tuesday 1 August Ivanhoe’s A Grade Debating Team, consisting of Tansy, Zahra, Ella, Isabelle and Dante won the Greenway Cup. This marks the second consecutive year that the cup has been won by Ivanhoe’s debaters. This prestigious debating competition has existed between the two schools for over 90 years, first beginning in 1932, 7 years before the commencement of World War 2.
This year five students, three debaters and two researchers were selected to represent the School and have their chance at battling the opposition to affirm ‘That monarchies should be abolished’. With only one hour to research, plan and write their speeches, students debated with passion and conviction, working hard to gain the upper hand. The team was thrilled to walk away with a deserving win. Congratulations to these students for being fantastic representatives of the school.
Student Reflection
On Tuesday 1 August, Tansy, Zahra, Ella, Dante and I had the privilege of competing for Ivanhoe in the Greenway Cup. The Greenway Cup is an annual debate that takes place between Ivanhoe Grammar and Ivanhoe Girls Grammar. The event has been in place since 1932, and each year the debate is over a new topic. The topics often reflect the news and current events of the period, and past debates have included everything from ‘That women should be paid as highly as men’ (1937) to ‘That the twentieth century will go down as the age of violence’ (1966) to ‘That the Olympic Games are fool’s gold’ (2004). On Tuesday, as is tradition, we were notified of the debate topic just one hour prior to the event, which was ‘That monarchies should be abolished’. We took the affirmative side.
Preparing a logical and coherent debate in only an hour is a challenge, but, with Ella and Dante as researchers, we were able to spend 20 minutes brainstorming and assigning arguments before writing all our notes and speeches. We kept writing down to the very last second, when Zahra took to the stage as our first speaker – Tansy followed, then so did I. The idea of performing a speech that we had written just minutes before to a theatre full of people might have once been terrifying, but, after 6 years of debating in front of only our parents and friends, it felt like an exciting end to our debating journey at Ivanhoe.
The celebrations were made even more exciting when it was announced that we had won the debate – retaining Ivanhoe’s lead. Debating, for all of us, has been an integral part of our Ivanhoe experience, and we feel grateful to have been given the opportunity to participate in this event. We look forward to watching and supporting Ivanhoe in the years to come.
