After being let down that Liberty did not have an established debate team, sophomore Carson Brown took the initiative to get one started along with the help of his sister, senior Madelyn Brown. They both had had experience in debate at their previous school.

Back when the Browns lived in Lee’s Summit, they always heard of the debate team and what an impact it had on a lot of students, so they joined.

“I participated in debate club my freshman and sophomore year and it was a class that you could take and it was a very big deal; lots of kids participated,” Madelyn said.

After seeing and hearing of all the fun his sister had on debate team, he looked forward to being a part of it as well. When they moved and started going to Liberty in the 2014-2015 school year, they found out there wasn’t an established team.

“It was an extremely competitive topic [at my old school in Lee’s Summit],” Carson said. “I have a lot of friends that are really involved with it and so when I heard from Mrs. Gehrke that I can participate I told her right away I want to start a club and get some people involved so we can have debate as part of the tradition in history in Liberty as well.”

They started it at the beginning of second semester, and with the help of Mrs. Gehrke they were quick to get on their feet and starting running with the program.

“First we saw that Liberty was sponsoring a tournament with speech and debate events and so we talked to Gerhke and tried to figure out if we could start one of our own because I had experience in it,” Madelyn said. “First we were trying to figure out if we needed to find a different sponsor or who we needed to get together to create the club and it just turned out Gerhke was willing to help us create a club and help us gather people to meet in her room.”

They have roughly about 15 people on the team so far and are encouraging more to join; especially as the years go on. It has a positive impact on the participants in the club and is beneficial to their logical and social skills.

“It gives me a lot of confidence,” Emily Mcpherron said. “Now that I’ve done that, everything else I do, it seems simple to me because going into that was so nerve racking and then coming out of it’s just everything else isn’t as much of a big deal anymore.”

So far the team has only gone to a couple debate tournaments.  They hope to advance the program and start next year with competing 2-3 debate tournaments a month.

They had a huge success at their latest tournament taking place over March 4th and 5th. Gehrke is proud of how quickly the team is advancing. For some students, this was only their second tournament and they were up against seniors who have done it all four years.

“On Friday night, we had three students compete in debate,” Gehrke said. “ZoeAne Wake competed in Lincoln-Douglas, and Carson Brown and Rishi Kondapaneni teamed up for Public Forum. They competed in four rounds. Although we did not advance to finals, they held their own and showed their bravery and determination.” 

As the weekend went on, Liberty’s debate team lead their way towards even more accomplishments that will benefit the foundation of the program.

“On Saturday, we had three students compete in speech interpretation events. Julia Wolz and Alyssa Fay performed in Duet Acting and placed 5th overall! And Jake Denunzio performed in Humorous Interpretation – he placed 3rd and is going to state,” Gehrke said.

As you go into the next school year, be thinking of joining the debate team, and possibly say you were the first one to take Liberty’s debate team to state.

“It’s a great way to become more educated in different topics both political and social and it helps people learn how to take other opinions into consideration and see the different sides.”  Madelyn Brown said.