Dylon Harrison

Staff Writer

Two weekends ago, ISU’s debate team traveled to Montana where a young team competed in the Rocky Mountain Classic tournament where two teams reached the final round while one won a championship and yet another placed third.

Three of the four teams ISU sent competed in the tournament’s final round. The only team that didn’t reach the final round missed out by one point.

“It went really well,” said Nick Grunig, debate team president. “We had a really successful weekend.”

This year, the debate team has 15 members, five of whom are new. Grunig, a junior, is the only upperclassman on the team.

“We’re definitely confident,” Grunig said. “I’m definitely confident with the people we have on the team.”

But the season is still young. The Lewis and Clark tournament, the largest tournament of the semester, is held the second weekend of Oct.

“It’s been an opportune moment to allow a lot of novices from college come in and learn from the high school veterans on the team,” said Kaden Marchetti, a debate team member.

Marchetti and his teammate, Jett Smith, were the champions of the Rocky Mountain Classic and many of the new members were either state champions or state champion contenders on their high school debate teams.

Next weekend, the team will travel to Twin Falls to compete in a tournament at the College of Southern Idaho (CSI).

“We love how much CSI has grown in the last few years,” Grunig said. “We’ve become almost sister teams.”

ISU’s biggest competition at this tournament is expected to be Boise State, one of the best college teams in the nation.

Normally, ISU and BSU would not compete against each other until nationals.

Each tournament the team competes in has different topics to debate, which usually fall into the same debate categories.

The debate team has two or three chances to compete per month on average and when they are not travelling, they compete in online tournaments.

The team hosts open debates once per semester, where they hold a debate that’s open to the public and allow audience members to ask questions at the end.

Grunig said the team had a good recruiting class this year but thinks it could have been better if they received scholarship funding from the school. As of right now, all debate team scholarships come directly out of their travel fund.

“We were competitive in the ’90s and early 2000s,” Marchetti said. “If our team is funded, and our team gets the resources it needs, you could have a nationally competitive team within two years.”