On Sept. 17, the Blue Valley Southwest debate team will be hosting a tournament for 12 area high schools with a total of 78 teams. A school hosts on average one tournament a year, but this year Southwest is hosting the upcoming tournament and a national qualifier in December.
“Hosting a tournament is a lot of work,” senior Swini Tummala said. “We have to get the judges, figure out room assignments, figure out judge assignments, make sure teams don’t debate each other or get the same judge twice, deal with crazy debaters and coaches, and on top of that deal with all of the problems that could arise.”
This tournament will be the first of the year for Southwest, so they are hoping to make a good impression.
“When we compete at other schools they will have a clear memory of us from when we hosted our tournament,” debate coach Jared Zuckerman said. “There is some reciprocity, if we don’t do our job well, we won’t receive any favors the rest of the semester.”
The tournament was scheduled in April and the team began to work on organizing the event at the beginning of the school year.
“We were told that we would be hosting a tournament on the second day of school,” sophomore Riley Clark said. “Then the students began working on finding judges and getting ready for the tournament.”
On the day of the event the Southwest debate team will not have the opportunity to compete, instead they will be busy hosting.
“At the actual event some of us will be in classrooms watching debates, others will make sure judges find their rooms and will be there to answer questions,” Zuckerman said.
Aside from preparing for the tournament the debaters have been putting in even more time to make sure that they will be ready for their first tournament.
“A lot of kids will come in everyday after school and they work so hard,” sophomore Alexis Mills said. “We spend so much time together we are basically a family, a very argumentative family.”
With all the extra work and the success of last season, the team has some strong goals for this year.
“I would like us to be more competitive than last year,” Zuckerman said. “We have a great group of seniors who, if they lead by example, will have a pretty good year.”