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Teen of the Week: Parkersburg South junior Sonnet Napier always ready to throw down facts, figures

By Douglass Huxley 4 min read

PARKERSBURG -- Parkersburg South High School junior Sonnet Napier said she has always had a love for debate.

'I've always enjoyed debate," Napier said. "My brother and I would literally pick dumb topics just to argue about them. One of the famous ones we love to have skirmishes over was 'How many holes does a straw have?'"

Napier said she and her brother have yet to settle on the answer to that question.

She said she began taking debate as an elective her sophomore year, but just recently joined the Speech and Debate Team, known as the Speaking Patriots, where she participated in her first competition at the Novice Speech and Debate season opener Sept. 30 at Parkersburg High School.

"I basically joined, and agreed to do this, days ago," Napier said. "I pretty much had no training, other than the elective class itself."

She said when she arrived at the competition she noticed everyone had a speech that was twice as long as hers and that they had picked important topics such as toxic shock syndrome and depression.

"And I got up there and talked about dinosaurs," Napier said. "I was told I could write it about whatever I wanted, and so obviously, what other topic of choice is there?"

She said her speech was short and she had no idea what she was doing. She said other students began questioning her technique asking why she didn't relate her speech to a metaphor, or why she didn't use diamond walking, a position a person giving a speech takes to help recall points in their speech.

"I thought there was no way I was placing in this, and that I would have to step up my game for the next time, and I got second place," Napier said. "The dinosaurs speak for themselves, I guess."

Napier said her speech was about the definition of a dinosaur. The definition is developed the same way as mammals and that there are ancient animals who are categorized as dinosaurs, but are something else.

She said she used the examples of the pterodactyl, close cousins of dinosaurs who evolved on a separate branch of the reptile family tree, and the dimetrodon, a genus of non-mammalian synapsid that lived during the Cisuralian age of the Early Permian period from 272 to 295 million years ago.

"I gave the reasons why, I defined a dinosaur, and I said within that definition, dinosaurs never went extinct," Napier said. "Because birds are a surviving lineage of maniraptora and theropods, and I went on from there."

Napier said she enjoys spending time in nature when she can. She said there is a creek that runs behind her house that she visits.

"It's really peaceful down there. For whatever reason, if you sit there long enough, everything kind of forgets you're there, and I just watch the deer walk by," Napier said. "Creation is amazing. It never ceases to amaze."

Napier said her faith is very important to her. She said she attends services twice every Sunday at the Warehouse Church in Parkersburg.

"I can't imagine not having a relationship with God," Napier said. "It would feel like I was going through my life by myself. It's good to live your life knowing a solidified truth, rather than trying to come up with those on your own."

She said one of her favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 5:20: "We are ambassadors for Christ." She said this was important because others will look to believers to see what a believer should be.

"It's just a good reminder, and even though we don't always live up to it, it's still there to try and get us back on the right track," Napier said. "Of course, you will never be a perfect emulation of how a Christian should behave, but it can help better your behavior when you remind yourself of that."

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com

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A Glance at Sonnet Napier

* Junior at Parkersburg South High School

* On the Speech and Debate Team

* Voting member of Student Council

* Part of the Youth Group at the Warehouse Church in Parkersburg

* Enjoys reading field guides, nature encyclopedias and medical journals

* Enjoys lifting weights

* Avid stargazer

* Plans to attend optometry school

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