The team will battle it out with Bathurst High and has a chance to lock up the competition in a three-way tie.

The historic inter-school contest held annually in conjunction with the Astley Cup moves to a new evening time slot for the first time this year.

Dubbo College Senior Campus deputy principal Craig May said the move away from the morning debate was to lift the profile of the competition that’s been running for almost eight decades.

He said they wanted to showcase the talent of the student debaters from Dubbo College, Bathurst High and Orange High.

They are hoping ex-students and other interested community members will come along in support of the team.

The 2017 Mulvey Cup team is made up of Year 12 students Rosa Williams-Karam and Ethan Hughes, as well as Year 11 speakers Swastika Sharma, Jade Bunt and Danika Roberts.

The team going into tomorrow’s debate against Bathurst will see Rosa as first speaker, Swastika as second speaker and Jade as third speaker, with Danika in the support role.

This debate will represent a first for Rosa who has joined the debating program this year. However all other students have significant experience in debating and public speaking.

Both debating teams will select the subject for the debate one hour prior to the clash, with the home team taking the affirmative view and Bathurst taking the negative view.

Last week the College team scored a loss to Orange High School in what was considered a close contest.

“The subject for the debate was that social media is having a negative impact on our communication skills,” Swastika said.

“Because the debate was away in Orange, we took the negative view.

“I think we did quite well but we needed to focus more on communication skills rather than communication itself, and we needed to link our examples back to the topic more often.”

The students say they love working as a team and enjoy the challenges that come with developing arguments within a very limited time-frame.

“It really gives you great confidence to be forced to form rebuttals on the spot and time management is just critical in both the planning and delivery of the debate,” Jade said.

“After it’s all over we are just overcome with this tremendous sense of relief!

“We really hope that some former students of the College and Dubbo High School will come tomorrow night and support us, as well as interested members of the community.

“It would give us a real buzz to have a supportive group of people watching on.”

The Senior Campus lecture theatre is outside of Block C at Senior Campus, which is quite close to the entry to Senior Campus.