Debate Events Offered
Policy, Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum, explained for someone who has never seen a round, with what makes each one different.
Read what the events areWhitefish Bay Debate
Whitefish Bay Debate empowers students to think critically, speak confidently, and compete with purpose through rigorous research, strategic argumentation, and a strong team culture.
How to join the teamFor parents
The season's tournaments
Every tournament this season in one place: the dates, where each one is, whether your student debates in person, from the high school or from home, and whether it is overnight. Add it to your own calendar and changes reach you without checking back.
Stay in touch
Email updates for parents and guardians
Occasional team news by email: meeting recaps, tournament dates and travel, and what the team needs from families.
- Signing up happens on Buttondown, the service that sends the team's emails. Your address goes to Buttondown, not to this site.
- Buttondown emails you a link to confirm. Nothing is sent to you until you do.
- Every email has a link to unsubscribe, and you can leave the list at any time.
Season results
The newest results
The placings Whitefish Bay debaters won at the season's most recent tournaments.
- Third speaker, Novice Lincoln-Douglas: Daksh Chauhan (2030)Ronald Reagan High School, Saturday, October 24, 2026
- State qualifying leg, Novice Lincoln-Douglas: Marianna Troicki (2030)Ronald Reagan High School, Saturday, October 24, 2026
- First place, Varsity Lincoln-Douglas: Anya Prakash (2027)Fort Atkinson, Saturday, October 17, 2026
Start here
Four things worth knowing first
Each one is a short page. Read the one that matches the question you came with.
How to join
Open to every student in grades 9 through 12, with no experience required and no tryout. Practice times and the three ways to sign up.
Read how to joinParent questions
Travel, costs, time commitment, judging, and what the team asks of a family over a season.
Read the parent questionsCoaches
The coaching staff, how to reach them, and who to write to with a question about your student.
Meet the coaches
New to this
What debate actually is
Debate is a club, open to any student who wants to join. It is a set of competitive events in which students research a question, build the case for each side of it, and argue it in front of a judge. The team competes in three of them: Policy debate, Lincoln-Douglas debate and Public Forum debate. Each one is explained in plain language on what the events are.
If you would rather start with the practical questions, travel, costs, time and what parents are asked to do, go straight to the parent questions.
Questions are welcome at any time, from students and from parents. Contact the coaches.
Why it is worth the weekends
What debate builds
A season of debate asks a student to do four hard things well, over and over, in front of someone keeping score.
Research that holds up
Students find the evidence, read the whole source, and learn quickly what happens to an argument built on a sentence taken out of context.
Speaking under pressure
Six minutes, a clock, and a judge. By the end of a season a student can stand up with four minutes of preparation and be worth listening to.
Thinking on both sides
Every student argues both sides of the same question across a season, which is the fastest way there is to stop arguing against a caricature.
A team that travels together
Long bus rides, early mornings, and a room full of people who take your ideas seriously. The team culture is the part students come back for.
What the research says
The academic case for debate
Parents often ask whether a season of debate is good for a student academically. Two studies are worth knowing about. Both looked at large city school districts, so the figures describe those students, not a promise about any one student here.
Students already doing well still gain
A study of Boston public school students compared each student with themselves in the years they did and did not debate. Taking part in policy debate raised English Language Arts achievement, and the gains were concentrated in reading that asks for analysis and argument. The gains were largest for students who had been behind, and students already in the highest-performing quarter of their year group still gained, by 0.096 standard deviations.
Source: Schueler and Larned, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2025. English Language Arts achievement of 3,515 debate participants in Boston Public Schools, 2007-08 to 2016-17, reported by how well students were already doing.
Higher test scores and grades
In a study of 35,788 Houston high school students, those who debated scored 109 points higher on the SAT and had a grade point average 0.66 points higher than comparable students who did not. The researchers compared debaters with statistically similar students; they did not assign anyone to debate. So this shows that debating and doing well go together, not proof that debate caused the difference.
Source: Ko and Mezuk, Educational Research and Reviews, 2021. SAT scores and grade point average of 35,788 students in the Houston Independent School District, 1,145 of whom debated, 2012 to 2015, matched with similar students on sociodemographic characteristics and 8th-grade standardized test scores.