High school students duked it out over the weekend at UF, but they hit with words instead of fists.
About 1,100 students from high schools across the country competed in the 27th Blue Key Speech and Debate Tournament on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at various locations across the UF campus.
There were 13 different speech and debate events, as well as three supplemental events for participants not advancing beyond the preliminary rounds.
The winners of each event were crowned in an awards ceremony in the Grand Ballroom on Sunday night in the Reitz Union.
Chelsey Campbell, a UF pharmacy graduate student and the tournament chairman, said the tournament drew local students as well as students from as far as California and Minnesota.
“This is a good opportunity for them to learn about the debate community and to increase their skills in all the different events that we offer,” Campbell said.
Marcos Gonzalez, a junior at Trinity Prep in Winter Park, Fla., won first place with a teammate in the duo interpretation event.
“We actually took the movie, ‘Big Fish,’ and cut it down into 10 minutes and performed it,” Gonzalez said.
The debates were judged by students.
