The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, March 27, 2014 | 22 WOSS talks the talk by Nathan Howes Special to the Beaver White Oaks Secondary School (WOSS) students once again proved they can talk the talk in a high school debate. The Oakville high school's seniors' English and bilingual teams both finished first at the recent Ontario Student Debating Union (OSDU) competition in Hamilton -- the first time WOSS has posted two simultaneous victories at the provincial level. WOSS has become known for its strong debating performance in recent years, winning competitions at Queens University last year and at McGill and Western universities in 2012. "It's been the most thrilling year we've had in debate. To win two provincial championships simultaneously is wonderful. I was wondering if it would ever happen and it finally did. I was just thrilled for the kids who won," said Hamish Guthrie, WOSS debate coach and teacher. The winning English team is Sabrina Frias, 17, and Sasha Teteruck, 17. The first-place bilingual team, of 16-year-olds Anubhav Mathur and Siddhant Chandgadkar, defeated its WOSS colleagues, Aidan Messom, 17, and Heidi Mittal, 17, in the final round. A second English team -- Joudy Sarraj, 17, and Nicole Nowoselski, 16 -- placed fifth at the competition. Both English teams have qualified for the national senior championship next month in Winnipeg. The students were thrilled to win, Guthrie said, but were drained after the preparation and competition. "One or two of the kids were sick. You have to sacrifice a lot. There's lost sleep and they're probably a bit behind in their schoolwork. They've had to shut one or two other things down for a bit, but all of the kids are really good students," said Guthrie, adding they competed against 100 other schools in Hamilton. He noted students usually spend three hours a week in school practising debate and another four-10 hours outside of class. The White Oaks Secondary School (WOSS) debating team had its best showing at the Ontario Debate Championships. Some of the teams are now heading to nationals. Members of the senior national finalists and the junior national finalists show off their awards from the provincials. In front, from left, senior provincial champs Sabrina Frias and Sasha Teteruck and Joudy Sarraj and Nicole Nowoselski (placed fifth in senior Ontario). In back, from left, are junior finalists Jenny Hu, Kashaf Salaheen, Omar M'Hiri and Ethan Strathadee. | photo by Graham Paine ­ Oakville Beaver (Follow on Twitter @halton_photog or facebook.com/HaltonPhotog More GO Bus Service Starting April 5, 2014, we're adding 36 new weekday trips and 31 new weekend trips on Route 47J ­ Hamilton/Square One to serve you better. The weekday 8:38 a.m. eastbound train from Aldershot will now depart at 8:34, make earlier stops to Clarkson, then make all stops to Union arriving at 9:41, to serve more customers. We're also making other changes across our network. Be sure to check your new schedule. Know before you GO: Download our GO Mobile App and sign up for On The GO alerts. For more info visit gotransit.com. 416 869 3200 1 888 GET ON GO (438 6646) TTY 1 800 387 3652 Pour plus de reseignements, veuillez visiter le site gotransit.com ou composer un des numéros ci-dessus. "I have to be prepping and running good practices every week. Some of them are up all night on some nights. They're preparing their debates, resolutions and topics, they're reading the newspaper and they're going off to tournaments," said Guthrie. "They're long days, but it's a lot of fun. We do it on the basis of hard work." One of the resolutions WOSS discussed at the competition was a House of Commons bill that would make all social media material permissible in judicial proceedings in court cases. "There's a belief that when people use their social devices to text each other and use Facebook, that what you say on it is not public. It may become public if your friends decide to send it around the world," said Guthrie. "There is a concern that this would be very relevant in court proceedings, should it not be usable." Debating is one of the school's biggest extracurricular activities, Guthrie said, noting there are between 70-100 students involved in any given year. "There are always new kids coming in and wanting to join debate. You always take them on. It's the fun that sells it and it's very sociable. They make a lot of friends here. It gives them a really good body of friends at the school," said Guthrie. The teacher said a good debater must read the newspaper, enjoy participating in a good conversation, be willing to prepare a case carefully and accept positive criticism. "Debate is more than just the ability to speak. It's the ability to listen and hear what the other side is saying and to reason out a way to beat that side," said Guthrie. "It takes a fair bit of fairly sophisticated thinking. A sense of humour is enormously important." The seniors' debate teams weren't the only successes for WOSS at the tournament -- two Grade 9 teams qualified for the junior nationals in Toronto in May. The teams feature 14-year-olds Ethan Strathadee and Omar M'Hiri and Kashaf Salaheen with Jenny Hu.