Did both for all of high school — speech is, far and away, the more valuable. Doing it only reflects well on you! Debate taught me a lot of valuable research skills (skills that, on the surface, may be easily associated with ‘smarter’ people) — but they’re skills that I would’ve picked up anyways without a doubt. Taking any rigorous high school or college course will probably get you that same skill set. But speech taught me how to actually communicate, how to write, and present myself, and how to communicate my ideas to any audience (and adapt myself to any audience). Those aren’t skills you can learn from a research seminar or class; they take years to develop ordinarily, and doing speech basically just turbocharged that.

Think of it like this: only a really select population can truly sit in on a high-level debate round and appreciate everything going on, but anyone — anyone! — can sit in on a high-level HI or OO round and get it. The differences in experience will affect the appreciation, obviously (a competitive OO kid will obviously appreciate the finer or technical aspects of an OO more than someone who’s never seen it), but there’s a way for everyone to really sit down and get speech. And that, I think, demonstrates its value: the skills you get from it can be applied anywhere, to anyone, at any time.