Debate #1 lower the drinking age?

There are many rules when it comes to debating. It's more than just disagreeing with a point your opposing team made. There is a certain structure and format that is required in order to properly debate. Their are also fallacies. Fallacies are common errors made during a debate. It's hard to use fallacies because they are easy to use but the less you use them, the stronger your debate becomes. The topic for our debate was whether we should lower the drinking age to 18 or keep it at 21. For our classes first debate,I honestly think we didn't do that bad, but there was a ton room for improvement.
Both them had strength and weakness. There were more weaknesses than strengths in the debate but it was our first one so I guess that's okay. The weaknesses that each team had is good so we know what to fix up for the second debate that is coming soon. Overall both teams were close but there were some minor differences.

I felt that my team had some noticeable weaknesses but also some strengths. I felt like for my opening statements I could have expanded more on some of my points. It was definitely shorter than it needed to be. I could have added more time to my statement by talking slower and pace each point out a little better. I had good and clear points but I wasn't able to fully expand and express the facts of each point. For the rebuttal portion, my team did a good job with the main points but some of them rebuttals were a little short and some weren't as clear as they could be. There were also some moments of attacking the other side which is something that should not happen during the next debate. The closing statement had clear points and was said well but needed more memorization. There were faults to all of our sections in the debate but we should use our mistakes to help us learn and hopefully imporge and not repeat the same mistakes.

On the other side, the strengths and weaknesses were slightly similar. The opening statement was good and loud. There were good points being said but there were way too many points. It was jumping for one point to the next, which lost the audiences focus in a way. It would be helpful to stick to one or two points and then branch out based on that. The rebuttal was good but there was some repeating going on. The points they brought up were good but there wasn't much detail added to each of the points. The opposing sides closing statement could have used some more information. It could have summarized what the debate was about a little better and the pacing could have been better but besides that it was good. No team was perfect as you can see.

In conclusion, both teams could have put more time and effort into really strenghting all of their points and ideas, but for the first round it was not to bad. The side that said the drinking age should be lowered to 18 won, and I feel that they did do a good job, but there wasn't too much of a difference between both teams. Their is much that both teams can work and improve for the next one.