Almost every student’s nightmare is having to spend 11 to 12 extra hours working at school on a Saturday. All over the country, high school debate programs usually have to do that once a season, and Manhattan High’s turn was last weekend.

“[MHS students] got to the school … at 6:35, and then all the competitors got there around 7:30, in the morning,” sophomore Lily Colburn said.

Setting up and running the tournaments hosted a new challenge for students as they had to make sure everything was timely and get both judges and debaters to their designated areas.

“It’s a different kind of stress because instead of focusing on doing well at the tournament you, you’re focusing on having a well-run tournament,” senior Cathy Lei said.

Taking charge and controlling how a tournament plays out is a complex process for students, but also allows them to have hands-on experiences with leading and controlling the outcome of hosted events.

“It could have gone better because there were a lot of issues going around the tournament, especially the fact that it was disorganized,” junior Robin Joung said. “A lot of issues were, basically, a lot of people didn’t know where rooms they were going to be in because a lot of things were mixed up and everything came out late and such.”

Members in the Debate program also spent time both setting up and cleaning the school afterwards to leave as little of a mess for the custodial staff as possible.

“We had to clean up, give stuff back [to school officials], like walkie-talkies, and yeah just clean up after other people who came here and fix up rooms,” Lei said.

The home tournament was also a great way for the Manhattan community to take another step in supporting the school and all the programs it hosts by volunteering to judge the different debates.

“We definitely want to thank all the judges that showed up,” Colburn said. “It definitely meant a lot to us that we got so many judges because it shows that everyone wants to support Manhattan High’s Debate Team.”