The debate team has gone above and beyond this season, both teams tying for 3rd at state in Garden City on January 12th. This is the first trophy that the debate team has ever won at state. The team took six students, and the four medalists were Amanda Branom, Jeanine Lopez, Jason Lin and Conner Mitchell.

“It was really exciting,” junior Jason Lin said, “And it’s the first time we ever won a state championship trophy for debate. So it was just really happy all around.”

The team had all season to prepare. Debate teacher Curtis Shepard said they had been practicing for a long time in order to achieve this goal.

“We tried to go to the biggest and hardest tournaments we could to get the most experience, so that when state rolled around we were most ready to go.”  Shepard said.

Although, this season wasn’t always smooth for the debate team.

Sophomore Jeanine Lopez said there are many struggles being a underclassmen competing on the varsity level.

“Usually as a sophomore, since it’s your first year in the varsity division, you’re supposed to do worse, competing against juniors and seniors,” Lopez said “But it actually went pretty well for us.”

After a long season, the team wasn’t sure how they would do under the high pressure of a big competition, but the students performed amazingly. They didn’t set their expectations high coming into the tournament, so it made their top three place that much sweeter.

“We didn’t really expect anything because we’re just like we want to do good, on the day so we didn’t look for a goal, we just wanted to try the best we could,” Lin said.