Ursula Frayne Speech Festival 2024

On Friday 30 August, the St Mary’s Debating Team represented Catherine McAuley College Bendigo (CMCB) in the Ursula Frayne Speech Festival at Our Lady of Mercy College (OLMC), Heidelberg.

The CMCB team, Amelia Boase, Holly Neilson and Sithuki Weerasinghe (Year 11), have prepared for the festival since the middle of Term 2 and were ready for the challenge and excitement of the day, beginning with a 6.30am start. The team represented the College in two debates, on the topics of Protesting and Climate Change and The Effectiveness of Mobile Phone Bans in Schools. The team did an excellent job, speaking confidently and working well together. This was a great achievement against very experienced teams. Ultimately, the two teams CMCB faced in their heats went on to compete against each other in the final. Our debaters were able to watch this final at the end of the day and were very impressed by what the teams presented with only one hour to prepare a blind topic.

The Ursula Frayne Speech Festival is a competition for Mercy schools across Australia. Students come together to celebrate the friendship and breadth of Mercy Education through competition in the areas of Debating, Public Speaking and Voice Choir.

We are proud of our debating team and the way in which they represented CMCB at this annual Mercy Education event. They should be very happy with their efforts. Thank you to Mr Matthew Angove who also worked with the team and acted as our chauffeur on the day.

Ms Katie French, English Humanities Facilitator