Continuous Writing

I was the last speaker to deliver my speech in the room. Our school team sat just a meter or so away, so nervous I could physically feel anxiety radiating from them. Every painful hour of training we submitted ourselves to was for this moment. So far, it had gone well: we had trounced so many of the so-called elite debate teams, cementing our status as the underdog. No one expected a team of seemingly-quiet girls to have come this far, but here we were, in the finals, against a team that had won the championship for ten years in a row.