Winning the state competition four out of the five years that the school has been open, the Blue Valley Southwest debate team is arguably home to one of the most successful activities in the school. Bringing home the 5A State title again, the debate team travelled to compete at Derby High School, a little south of Wichita on Friday, Jan. 16th.

The 2-speaker state champions were senior Andie Divelbiss and senior Alex Ghekas.

“Getting better [with] all the practice that we did and all the research that we did [was ultimately for] working up to state because that was kind of the culminating event,” Divelbiss said. “It was a lot of time, but it was definitely worth it.”

Also competing in 2-speaker competition were the teams of sophomores Abby Fry and Dean Ziegelman, who got fifth place, the team of sophomore Alexa Kathol and senior Nick Foulon who got third place and the team of seniors Chris Fry and Jacob Hegna, ,who got fourth place.

“State was more high strung because there were a lot of expectations set up from like previous debate successes that we had,” Ziegelman said. “There was more pressure at state, but at the same time it was still very fun and laid back.”

The 4-speaker team of junior Margo Johnson and senior Lauren Stone, who debated as the affirmative team, combined with senior Lainey Schrag and junior Zach Novicoff, who debated as the negative team, placed second.

“Before we went to 4-speaker state, unlike [2-speaker], you have for qualify and so we first started preparing for a regional competition, which we ended up getting first in,” Schrag said. “Going negative is a lot more frustrating than going affirmative just because people can throw curveballs that you’re not expecting, but it was our coach’s choice, ultimately who got affirmative and who went negative.”

The four trophies didn’t come without hard work, though. The debaters worked for hours after school the whole season to prepare for tournaments. In the end, the hard work resulted in an “ice-cream assembly” of recognition and more accolades to add to the shelf.

FAVORITE MOMENTS FROM STATE 2015:

Sophomore Dean Ziegelman: After our third round, [sophomore] Abby [Fry] and I were sure we lost. I mean, we’re both sophomores and we didn’t have a lot of experience, and we went into a debate that everybody thought we were going to lose. That mindset kind of brought us down a bit, and after the debate, we thought we lost, and after we got the ballot back, we found out we won, and it was just really nice that we could adapt to different styles of debate.

Sophomore Alexa Kathol: My favorite moment was probably when we got done and we got our  trophy. [Senior Nick Foulon and I] didn’t move on, which was kind of sad, but we got to watch [seniors] Alex [Ghekas] and Andie [Divelbiss] compete in their last round, and it was really nice to get to share that winning moment with them.

Senior Lainey Schrag: Probably just being at a tournament with all of my friends in high school and getting to do all of the shenanigans like eating at Denny’s at 1 in the morning after the tournament. Watching the final round of [seniors] Andie [Divelbiss] and Alex [Ghekas] was a highlight, like when they announced that they had won State, and we knew that as a team we had gotten first place and I called the ice cream sandwich assembly that we had.

Senior Andie Divelbiss: Probably when we were done. and we heard that we won, and everyone was hugging and [senior] Lainey [Schrag] was yelling, ‘ice-cream,’ and we got to leave the room which was really, really hot, and we got into the commons and [senior] Alex [Ghekas] just lied down on the ground. And it was just really good because everything that we had worked for had come together after debating for 14 hours.