After debating other schools throughout the school year in five local competitions called WACFLs, the McLean debate club is now ready to advance to Metrofinals. To qualify for Metrofinals, debaters had to win at least three out of four rounds twice in a local competition.

“The majority of our club does WACFL, which is our local competition,” freshman Saachi Thomas said. “We’ve been doing well so that’s how we have a bid to Metrofinals. Every year is usually pretty successful when we can have people growing and learning, which is the main point of it.”

Rounds at WACFL allow debaters to build up experience by competing against other schools in a more formative environment. WACFL is the first step for debaters looking to advance to state or even national competitions.

“A lot of new debaters have proven themselves to be good contenders,” junior Michael Jiang said. “The growth that we have seen, especially from the freshmen, has been great, with everyone being so motivated to learn.

Metrofinals is the final competition of the year for the club, which will send nine members in total to compete in both public forum and Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debates at the state level. The competition is managed by the same organization that runs the local WACFL competitions.

“There will be eight of us doing public forum and one person doing LD,” Thomas said.

Even so, the topics debated between the different levels of competition are the same since they are set by the National Speech and Debate Association. For March, the topic will be “In the United States, the benefits of using generative AI in education outweigh the harms.”

The club is looking to finish the year strong at Metrofinals, which will bring a higher level of difficulty for debaters.

“I am looking forward to our teams competing and working their heart out in their rounds,” Jiang said. “The amount of meetings and rounds that we have had to prepare them has been tremendous.”