Manhattan High School’s Varsity and Junior Varsity debate teams brought recognition to Manhattan.

The Varsity team of Nathan McClendon and Cathy Lei, and the J.V. team of Douglas Kim and Lily Colburn competed at Kapaun Mt. Carmel this past Saturday and placed second in Sweeps, allowing them a closer chance to get a step ahead in their yearly goals.

“Sweeps is like, so overall,” senior Cathy Lei said. “Which means we got second out of all of the teams there.”

In the J.V. division of the tournament, Kim and Colburn placed third over the other J.V. teams, gaining experience, confidence and points for the school.

“I would say that since they’re both different it’s hard to pick,” sophomore Lily Colburn said. “Varsity’s definitely fun because it’s like ‘I competed in Varsity’, but J.V.’s good too.”

Additionally McClendon and Lei made it into quarterfinals with a 5-1 record of wins to losses, both receiving Bids to qualify them for the Debate Coaches’ Invitational, one of the top tournaments in Kansas.

“They dropped in quarterfinals to Shawnee Heights on a really really great debate actually,” coach Ben Sutherland said. “The folks who were talking about that round afterwards talked about it being ‘certainly the best debate I saw that tournament.’”

The tournament was overall a huge success for the Debate team, bringing them closer to their goals than before.

“As of this year, we, we haven’t won or anything, I think second’s the best we’ve gotten,” Lei said. “We had a younger team who was in, like, Junior Varsity, and they did very well. So that definitely helped.”

This upcoming weekend the Debate team will be hosting their annual tournament, inviting schools from around Kansas to come and compete.

“We’re not competing but we’re going to be running it,” Colburn said. “And then the next tournament we’re competing at is the first week of November.”