The club of every argumentative kid’s dream, Speech and Debate, is rapidly growing and has achieved the spot of largest club at Robinson in just its first year. Already hitting the hundred-member landmark, the debate club is comprised of students ready to practice their public speaking skills and compete in tournaments.
“Usually at the beginning, we start off with short announcements, and then we break off into competitor and non-competitor groups. Some just want to just improve their speech and debate skills while others are more inclined to compete. Our officer team will then split up to work with the student’s using practices and other mock tournament type drills, whatever is best suited for their goals,” said President of the club Ayan Nallamshetty (’25).
Despite the incredible size of the debate club, only about 20-30 people seriously compete. The competition team has already attended three tournaments and the last one was hosted by Robinson on Jan. 20. Their next step is competing in the regional qualifier in order to attend the national tournament, which is highly competitive.
Teams are allowed for debate as well and students Bella Musolino (’26) and Reid Taggart (’26) form a dynamic duo in their event: policy debate.
“Bella and I were already friends, so we knew we would work well together which was good. We met up before our first tournament and researched the national speech and debate and what they did and then we based ours off how they did theirs, and just wrote out our whole debate,” Taggart said. “We got better every time we competed and learned to improve our arguments based off their counterarguments.”
The pair have won three first places in a row, even winning gold in their first tournament.
“We do a lot of prep and researching to build our case, and use mostly trial and error, to keep on improving. Our personal strategy is to just shoot down every point that the other side is saying, and after every tournament we go back and take notes on what they [the opposing side] said and add the good points to our argument so each time our argument is new and strengthened,” Musolino said.
For those who aren’t into intense competition, there’s going to be a statewide grand finals novice tournament at the end of the year, where majority first year debate students get to compete against other first year members across the state.
“I would like to thank all our current members of speech and debate, and if you’re not a member yet, you better join up. It’s so much fun we do really cool activities, you can ask any of our members. If you’re good at public speaking this is a way to get even better, and if you’re not than this is how you can prepare for the rest of your life,” Nallamshetty said.
