Liberty’s young debate team begins with successful season

After decades as a competitive team for Liberty University, Liberty Debate remains dominant among its competition and holds an winning record this season, despite being a rookie team. 

Last year’s debate team had a group of seniors and veteran debaters who swept the competition with top-three finishes in the American Debate Association, Cross Examination Debate Association and National Debate Tournament, according to Liberty News. This year’s rookie team must compensate with skill what they lack in experience. 

Out of the team of 24 students, there are no seniors and more than half are freshmen, according to Liberty News. 

Founded in 1980, the debate team began as a regional competitor and did not compete on the national stage until the mid-1990s.  Competing among Ivy League schools is now the norm for Liberty Debate, according to Debate Team Director Michael Hall.

“Beating Harvard or Dartmouth or Cornell or NYU or any of those schools is not an unusual thing for us to do,” Hall said. “We do that pretty often nowadays.”

Hall said that the debate team owes its success to the caliber of students at Liberty. 

“(The team’s success) is evidence of the quality of student that we have at Liberty … you can’t debate and beat an Ivy League school if you don’t have  people at the intellectual firepower to debate at that level,” Hall said. 

Freshman McKayla Swan came into this debate season with no previous debate experience. Swan is in one of the six novice team partnerships and attributes the young debate team’s successes to the investment of their coaches. Hall said the team spends lots of its practice time on skill development to grow the skillsets of the young debaters.  

Varsity debater and Liberty sophomore Jared Demunbrun said the team’s camaraderie and work ethic allows the team to compensate for their lack of debate experience. 

The debate team received the year’s debate topic at the end of July. The team crafts an argument throughout the year and debates this topic in tournaments from late September through early April. Preparing for tournaments requires hours of research, scouting other teams and organizing oral arguments from the affirmative and negative angles.

This year’s topic is on U.S. space policy and whether the U.S. should increase collaboration with China and Russia in space development. The debaters must curate both an affirmative and negative argument for and against the topic. Learning how to argue both sides of an issue helps to understand other points of view.

“(Debating both sides) helps you think from all perspectives … and have an ability to see other people’s perspectives and relate that to your own perspective,” Swan said.

Swan also said that the debate team’s experience in critical thinking, prepping arguments and learning how to articulate ideas will help them in their future careers. Demunbrun said learning both sides of an argument teaches critical skills about respect in today’s culture. 

“You’re forced to listen to both sides of the argument, which is kind of distinct because in today’s culture a lot of people just ignore the other side…” Demunbrun said. “It teaches you how to listen to people while also teaching you how to properly respect other peoples’ arguments.” 

Each member of the team will compete in six to 13 debates in one weekend, with each debate lasting around two hours. This makes for a long and exhausting day for the debaters, Demunbrun said. Support from the team is what allows the debaters to persevere through the tournament weekends. 

“That drive to work together and continued motivation is able to get all of us through the week, even though all of us are very tired and practically dead by the end of the (debate weekend),” Demunbrun said.  

The team competed at Georgia State University, Binghamton State University and the University of Mary Washington for its  first three tournament weekends, where they maintained an undefeated record to begin the season.  

The debate team competed at West Point Military Academy this weekend, where both a novice and varsity lost in finals. The debate team will continue its season with tournaments at George Mason University in November.