After a few years of transitional leadership, English teacher Allison Kester finally has the Speech and Debate team functioning highly with 16 active members, two head captains, and two coaches leading them though competitions.

Before Allison Kester became the sponsor, the team barely got off the ground with only two standing members who wanted to compete.

After recruiting and building a solid program, Kester is also seeing the benefits of her team members doing some recruiting.

“I have had conversations with people and speech would just come up and I am like. public speaking or communicating, you should join,” speech captain Kara Sampson said.

The speech and debate team can help develop research and analytical skills for any type of discussion used. Leadership is a big role of something students can learn in speech and debate. Sampson and Anyiah Wilson are the active captains helping their team succeed to victory.

Students on the debate team participate in competitions for different areas, but all of the competitions are bound within the idea that communication is an important art form.

“I believe speech and debate skills are necessary to participate effectively in a society that is so immersed in communication,” Kester said.

The rebuilding of the team has helped spread the word about the importance of debate and speech across the school. Rebuilding not only helps expand, but opens up more activities for students who want to try something new and different. The members of the team not only are expanding their minds but expanding their voice.

Actively speaking and going back and forth with others give the team confidence to be able to speak out and speak their opinions in challenging situations.

“(Being a part of speech and debate) helps me speak more confidently to others more smoothly” junior Raphael Blevens said.

The use of debate and speech will not only help these student’s high school career but later on in life when they are put into real life decisions and arguments. Debate is not just about arguing back and forth; the teams go to tournaments all over Missouri expanding their backgrounds with others around the state. The experience of going out to other schools around Missouri helps these students grow their resources and connections with others.

“I think a lot of people do not want to join clubs in general because they are scared of interacting with a lot of people,” Sampson said.

Students who are in debate and speech use their skills there for other clubs and programs they are in as well.

“Debate has helped my communication skills for JROTC,” Blevens said.