Both the junior and senior debaters have been involved in mace debating competitions in recent weeks.  On the 13th and 14th of November some of our seniors went to UCD to take part in the L and H mace.  Sarah Duffy, Grace Given, Elizabeth Bolger, Julie O’Brien, Lia Bennett and Lucy Alvarez O’Neill all competed well throughout the competition.  Sarah and Grace along with Elizabeth and Julie broke to the semi finals after five rounds of tough debating.  Unfortunately they were drawn in the same semi final where they had to debate a difficult motion about the comedic depiction of Adolf Hitler in German Culture.  They dealt with the challenge incredibly well and produced four excellent speeches.  Grace and Sarah progressed to the final and while they didn’t emerge victorious they spoke brilliantly as always.  In addition to this Sarah, Grace, Elizabeth and Julie all finished in the top eight speakers overall for the competition. 
The following weekend saw the juniors take the spotlight as they competed in the St Conleths Junior Mace.  We had lots of students who were eager to take part and so Caoilainn Carey, Sophie Bannon, Isabelle Healy, Hana Gallagher, Sarah Lawler, Amy Collins, Maeve Bruen, Adrianne Ward, Ellen McKimm, Nora Wyer, Aoife Paul, Emily Mansfield, Claire Gregg, Aoileann Ní Mhurchú and Tara O’Sullivan all competed.  Once again the standard was very high as they debated topics such as compulsory voting and paying GAA players.  All our speakers did well throughout the day with two of our teams progressing to the final.  Sophie and Caoilainn would square off against Isabelle and Hana in the second half of the final with teams from Belvedere and Colaiste Iosagain opening the debate.  In the final the students debated about banning offensive art with everybody making an interesting contribution.  Sophie and Caoilainn got the win to bring another debating trophy back to The Green.  In addition to this, Sophie was named the overall best speaker in the competition (just edging out Caoilainn by two points).  When the tab was released we were delighted to see how well all our teams had done with six of our teams finishing in the top 16 (out of 52 teams).  Well done to all involved!     

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