Shawnee Mission South’s debate program won the largest national academic competition for high schoolers for the first time in program history.
Two class of 2023 seniors, Clare Bradley and Brooklynn Hato, won the National Speech & Debate Association’s 2023 National Tournament last month.
This win comes a few weeks after two other Raider debaters, junior Maddie Augustine and senior Jeremiah Rimpson, won the 2023 National Catholic Forensics League Tournament — a different debate championship.
Capping off a 4-year high school debate career for the pair
- Last year, Hato and Bradley came home victorious from the 2022 NCFL Tournament — a first for the Raider debate program.
- Bradley said this year’s win at the NSDA tournament, which focused on security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “was about the best capstone” to her and Hato’s debate careers that she could have imagined.
- “We weren’t initially planning on going to the tournament, but by the way things panned out, we ended up competing,” Bradley said. “So for us to come home with the national championship was just like a dream come true, really.”
- Both Hato and Bradley plan to debate at the collegiate level — Hato at the University of Kansas and Bradley at the University of Southern California.
Nationals is more intense than other competitions
- Carolyn Cook, the director of speech and debate at SM South, said the NSDA tournament is unlike anything the students have ever done before.
- That’s because they are onstage in front of thousands of people, while being televised and recorded, Cook said.
- There are also nine judges on the panel at the NSDA tournament, four more than usual, which means students are arguing in front of a wide diversity of debate opinions.
- “It’s nerve wracking, because the debate looks different,” Cook said. “We had discussed all along we are going to do what we do no matter what round we’re in, and we’re going to do that on the national stage if we get there.”
SM South also won a prestigious award
- SM South’s debate team also earned the Unger Cup at NSDA, which Cook said is given to the program that had the most competitive year across five national championship competitions.
- Bradley said it was nice to see the program’s success and hard work recognized by winning the Unger Cup.
- Hato said the Unger Cup solidified the program’s success — and she and Bradley’s win.
- “It was like written in stone, like number one sort of,” Hato said. “I was really happy to get it because I didn’t think that we were going to, so when I found out we got the Unger Cup, I started crying. I was very happy.”
