Munster’s debate team works its way to earning titles at Districts and State this year.

This year, Debate has earned top five placements in almost every tournament so far. This is an improvement from last year, where the team was struggling from the loss of a coach and coming out of COVID.

Addy Ellis, junior, vice president and captain of World Schools, is proud of how this season is going.

“I think the season is going really, really well,” Addy said. “All of our teams are on a great track record. I think we’re in a really good position to win some really, really big state titles this year.”

There are five events within Debate, each working to different goals for State, and Districts if that applies. There is World Schools, Policy, Lincoln Douglas, Public Forum and Congress. While World Schools does not have Districts, Congress has Districts on Dec. 9 and districts for the other three categories are later. Districts allow the team to qualify for Nationals, while State is separate.

“I think we’ll be pretty strong at districts,” Asha Patel, junior and Congress captain, said. “I think it’s very likely that we’ll have at least a couple of national qualifiers.”

Debate puts effort into this. Team meetings happen on Wednesdays, and debaters can come into practice at other times, usually once or twice a week; the occasional debater would come in three times. For the team, weekly competitions on Saturdays serve as a way to improve, taking critique and building off of it.

“Something you’ll see in debaters is that we always want to be right,” Addy said. “And usually that wanting to be right is the thing that pushes us the most, because we’re always like, I’m spending two to three practices a week, I’m spending 12 hours at a tournament on Saturday. I’m doing this all for a reason. I’m doing this to be the best I can be at it.”