Last weekend the Manhattan debate team placed third in sweeps with another successful debate, tying with Washburn Rural, at the Shawnee Heights meet. While there they took on a few schools such as Lawrence, Washburn Rural, Hayden and more.

Juniors Maiesha Hossain and Lily Colburn took first place in open division. Colburn had a perfect debate with a one in every round and every decision was 3-0.

“The finals [were the hardest] for sure because it was so confusing and we were going against seniors, but it worked out,” Hossain said.

Senior Sean McGimpsey and junior Martina Hernandez received fourth place in open division.

“The further along the year goes, people get more and more prepared for what everyone else has because we see it more often so every tournament is always harder than the last,” McGimpsey said.

Freshman debaters Caden Hickel and Ivy Auletti received eighth place in the novice division.

“Just starting out, the novices going from [knowing nothing] to what they know now is always amazing,” McGimpsey said.

Auletti and Hickel have placed a few times so far in the season and have been gradually improving as first time debaters.

“We have a really strong set of novice debaters,” McGimpsey said, “and even the ones that have done this before always learn more, always learn something new, [and] get better.”

Although the team is doing great, they still leave room for improvement and are open to constructive criticism from their judges.

“We have really good judges when sometimes write in the ballots things that students could’ve done better like ‘you should’ve said this,’” coach Kristal Kleiner said, “so on Mondays we look at our ballots and kind of take notes and recalibrate, figure out what we did wrong and how we can fix it.”

The next debate will be on Nov. 18 and 19 at Topeka High.