The De Soto High School debate team took fifth place at the State competition in El Dorado on Saturday, Jan. 17 after taking second at the Regional competition to qualify.

According to freshman Camille Poulain, the team worked very hard to prepare for the competition.

“We stayed after school until around seven o’clock for four nights, looking up evidence and practicing our case,” Poulain said.

The students who participated in the competition competed well and looked quite impressive to some of the coaches from other leading debate teams in the state, according to debate coach Jason Hagg. Hagg also said that this group of students “put DHS debate on the map.”

“Two coaches that have been massive powers in debate for over 20 years came up to me and said that next year they’re going to have to look out for us because our students want to win and have all the things it takes to be a good debater,” Hagg said.

The State competition was a two-day ordeal. On Friday, the DHS team left the competition feeling good. The team needed two wins to get third, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

“We were right there on both days and we just kind of had a bad last round that bumped us from third to fifth on Saturday,” Hagg said.

Despite not placing as highly as they had hoped, the debate students still felt good about their performance.

“We got fifth overall. We performed very well on the speaking side of it compared to what I thought we would do. We improved quite a bit from the beginning of the year,” senior Jacob Sweatt said.

Poulain also agreed that peaking is a very important part of debate and how you speak often affects how well you do in meets.

“Speaking is way more important at some points than evidence is, because the way you portray yourself sometimes means more than what you’re saying,” Poulain said.

Participating in the State competition this year made the team realize what they were capable of.

“I think they learned that they really want to win. They saw that we lost and they realized that they really want to bring home one of those plaques next year and they saw that it’s very achievable for them if they work for it,” Sweatt said.

The debate team also learned a lot from their experience at State that will help them prepare for next year’s competition and future meets. One thing was that it would be a good idea to bring a brand new case to state.

“We ran the same case we ran all year. All three of those top placing teams at state changed their case. They had something brand new and brought it. Next year we’ll change ours too, we’ll bring something new to State,” Hagg said.