The debate Regional tournament, hosted by Salina South, takes place today and tomorrow. The teams competing for McPherson will be Andrew Richards and Jill Koehler and Ryan Norman and Ingrid Gustafson, srs. If these teams do well at Regionals, they will advance to State next week.

“We should win,” Norman said. “Out of all the 5A teams, we’ve been the most successful this year.”

The debate team’s optimism and determination may be fueled by a long line of debate success. At the last four years at State, MHS debaters have placed in the top three, including last year when they took home both second and third places.

Confronted by the tradition of winning, one might think that debaters feel pressured to do well.

“No, not really. We just do our thing and try to do our best,” Norman said.

According to Scott Bonnet, sponsor, MHS has attended State for the last 14 straight years, and his outlook on this year’s competition is positive.

“We have a really good group of debaters this year,” Bonnet said, “and we have a fairly reasonable shot at the State Championship.”

Future years look promising as underclassmen took home prizes of their own at the novice championship in Topeka.



Out of 110 teams, the novice debaters held three places out of the top six with Amelia Yowell, fr., voted the top competitor of all 220 novice debaters.