The Manhattan High debate team broke in the new competition season at two-day DCI tournament hosted by Washburn Rural Sept. 14-15, with teams competing in both Open Division and Varsity Division debates.

This and the debates to come are all practice to argue the season’s national debate topic. According to the Kansas State High School Activities Association, this year’s topic is “The United States federal government should substantially reduce its restrictions on legal immigration to the United States.”

Competing against 60 different teams in the Open and 70 in the Varsity, MHS finished with two debate partnerships in good shape for the upcoming season and two who went undefeated in the Open affirmatives.

The partnership that caught the judges’ attention was that of juniors Megan Keenan and Allison Payne, who went undefeated in the Open preliminaries, won the quarter-final round 3-0 and took third place overall out of 60 teams.

While Keenan and Payne were unavailable for comment at the time of publication, junior Will Bannister shared his thoughts on the tournament as a whole.

“Our primary objectives of the WaRu tournament where to get an idea of the topic landscape this year…because the nature of legal immigration means that there could be lots of interpretations of what is topical,” Bannister said. “However, more importantly, we needed to just dive in and get debate running through our veins after the long offseason. I think we accomplished both of those goals.”

Debate will compete again in Emporia on Sept. 22.