Why Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Is The Debate Team To Beat At This Weekend’s Championships

High school policy debate is affectionately referred to as a sport for nerds.

Past participants include presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and Oprah. And it’s a sport Montgomery Bell Academy is really good at this year.

The most prestigious competition is set to take place this weekend. High schools are lucky to be able to send at least one team. MBA has four.

Policy debate is not the sort of activity anyone can easily jump into. It requires a lot of time, research, and a particular oratory skill known as “spreading.” It’s essentially speed reading so

debaters can fit in as many arguments as possible into their timed speeches.

MBA senior Andrew Kaplan shows how it’s done, cramming this sentence into less than 10 seconds.

“And might gain meaningful buy-in and payoffs attribution may be an acceptable price to pay to persuade China that cannot afford to be caught spying on the U.S. critical infrastructure whereas today China can blithely ignore all the evidence showing its spies where it should not.”

Kaplan and his teammate

recently won the Baker Cup, a trophy awarded to the best high school debaters in the country. He was inspired to join by a family member.

“My cousin had been doing debate throughout his high school career, and he was a senior when I was a freshman,” he says. “So I kind of had seen from a distance what he was doing and I thought what he was doing was really cool.”

Kaplan is just one of seven students from MBA set to compete this weekend. 

In 1999 and 2005, MBA won the Tournament of Champions. But since then, the team has been in a bit of a lull.

A few years ago, the school decided to start letting its 7th graders join the team. This gives them two-years of practice before being able to debate in high school competitions.

MBA also has an experienced coaching staff that gives them a bit of an edge. While attending the all-boys private school, coach Robbie Quinn won the Tournament of Champions in 1999. And varsity coach Joshua Clark recently won an award for being the “coach of the year.”

Before the team travels to the University of Kentucky for the tournament, Clark gathered up the guys. Like any good coach would before a big game, he offered a pep talk.

“We don’t get any redos,” he said. “All we can do between now and then is put everything that we have into it.”