Earlier in the year, the speech and debate team went to Jefferson city for a competition. The competition was between 35 schools in Missouri. FHN scored fourth place, with several students making it to semi-finals.

“We received an award for having the most people move on to semi-finals,” senior Rachel Rotter said.

Students can pick from a variety of categories and topics to give speeches or have debates over, then they use their skills to compete against several other schools. The students are judged based on their skills, and earn points not only for themselves, but also for the school they are representing. This allows individual students to move on to the next round, and schools as a whole to be ranked.

“If we get someone who scores third place for a Lincoln Douglas debate, and we get someone who finishes first place in dramatic interpretation, we get points for that as a school,” sponsor Joelle Sanders said. “So we get overall points, but there will also be individual awards for the students if they place.”

On Feb. 12 and 13, the speech and debate team will participate in another competition at Marquette high school. They’re planning to just do the best that they can, and have many students move on to semi-finals, and hopefully finals.

“I’d like to win, I do want to get first place,” junior Mary Grace Cole said. “As a team, it’d be nice if we got sweeps, which is where your team, overall, scores more points than everybody else.”