Roosevelt High School debate team competes at state tournament

Jan. 12-13, 2024, the Roosevelt High School Debate team competed in the MSHSL Minnesota State Debate Tournament. Students from all across Minnesota gathered for high quality, rigorous, debate, and we are proud that Roosevelt was there to represent Minneapolis!" said Skye Spindler, the Augsburg Community Debate Liaison.

 

Many students don’t get the opportunity to attend State until they are upperclassmen, but Roosevelt debaters aren’t like most students. This is the second year juniors Ani McQuillen and Eleanor Nervig have competed at the MSHSL State Debate tournament - returning to exceed expectations once again. As Ani shared, “Eleanor and I were really excited for State and we debated our best all season. Our goal was to double our record from last year and we met it by winning against teams we didn’t think we could beat.” Indeed, Ani and Eleanor had some impressive wins at this tournament against nationally competitive partnerships from Edina and South Minneapolis. 

 

Ani also reflected that this season was meaningful because of more than wins, concluding, “It’s great to see how far we’ve come in a year, and we met other goals too, like writing a case with my teammates all by ourselves.”

 

These students are members of the Minnesota Urban Debate League (MNUDL), a program of Augsburg University. MNUDL provides academic competitive debate programming for more than 1,300 middle and high school students in the Twin Cities.