More than 100 high school students from around the country have packed into KU classrooms the last few weeks to master their skills in policy debate, part of a cycle that current and former Kansas debaters say keeps the state a premier debate destination.
For the last decade, Kansas has cemented itself as one of the best states for high school debate, alongside traditional powerhouses like Texas and California.
KU has long boasted a quality debate team, one that holds six national titles. A KU pair has competed in the national championship round each of the last two years.
According to debaters from the area, that cycle of success is bolstered in large part due to an annual summer camp in Lawrence: the Jayhawk Debate Institute.
The 135 campers hail from states including Texas, Maryland and Oregon. But the majority of campers are local, something the JDI prides itself on.
Current KU student and Free State graduate John Marshall said the camp helps form a cycle. Young high schoolers from the area come to the JDI and learn from college debaters and coaches with KU ties. Once those high schoolers have graduated, they return to the camp to pass on their skills to the next generation.
“A lot of KU debaters who are undergraduate students will coach for local high schools and get debaters interested in KU that way,” Marshall said. “Obviously, having the camp here encourages a lot of people to stay because they experience the KU coaching staff or being on the university’s campus. Those are all ways that the camp gets people into the community.”
Marshall is a good example of how this cycle works. He attended the JDI as a high schooler at Free State and went on to win the most competitive high school national tournament. Now, he is a nationally lauded debater for KU and in his third year coaching at the camp, including helping some new Free State students follow in his footsteps.
Cooper Hefty, a 2025 Free State graduate who had national success after Marshall, returned to the camp this summer to help judge. Hefty said the JDI has a culture focused on learning from mistakes and allowing students of all skill levels to focus on their own passions.
Carter Fite is entering his junior year at Free State and his third season with the debate team. Last summer, he attended the JDI for the first time, and this year he is back for the longer three-week camp.
Fite said it is exciting to work with former Free State debaters like Marshall and Hefty and follow in their footsteps.
“It’s really interesting to be able to be like, this is how this came to be and this is a person that went to my school and was in a similar place to me, which I thought was really cool,” Fite said.
The opportunity is especially valuable as Fite looks to reach higher levels of debate.
After his first season, Fite knew debate camp was the best option to make the jump to the varsity debate level. Debaters spend most of their first year learning the rules of the activity and practicing slowly in front of volunteer parent judges. When they reach the varsity level, debaters start reading their speeches as fast as possible and speed through dozens of pieces of evidence in an effort to sway experienced judge panels.
Fite said he is interested in debating at a national level and travelling, just like Marshall and Hefty did during their careers.
“It seems a lot nearer, because it’s people that you know and you interact with on a daily basis that are able to go do these things,” he said.
This year’s edition of the camp has run the last couple of weeks and featured students taking refuge from the heat by studying this year’s topic of Arctic policy.
The JDI begins with a series of topic lectures introducing students to a policy area they have likely never heard of. By the end of the week, they’ll be experts, speed-reading academic articles spliced into perfectly timed speeches. The efforts are all aimed to prepare them for a new season, where high schoolers will spend long weekend days arguing their way through tournaments.
The reach of the JDI extends far beyond Lawrence. Ryan Cavanaugh attended high school in Chicago and debated at the University of Iowa. Now, as a grad student at KU, Cavanaugh is helping coach at the camp.
“Debate gave me an opportunity to talk about things that I don’t think I had another place to do so,” Cavanaugh said.
One reason Cavanaugh values debate camp, which they attended as a high schooler, is the opportunity it can provide for students with less resources to get top-tier coaching.
JJ Madsen and Sreshta Mathukuri are high schoolers from Minnesota attending the JDI for the first time. Their debate team endured last year without a coach, which they said makes the JDI a valuable opportunity to get coaching before a new season.
“Our captain came here last year and he said it was a really good program,” Mathukuri said. “There’s a lot of knowledgeable people and there’s so much to learn. We were put at a disadvantage without a coach, so it was pretty imperative for us to come and catch up.”
E.C. Powers went to high school in Missouri and competed on the debate team at Jefferson City High School before debating at the University of Wyoming. Powers said the most valuable thing about debate is the community it forms.
“If I want to be completely honest, I often don’t think about all the wins and losses I’ve had in debate, but rather some of the people I’ve met along the way,” Powers said. “Which is a bit cliche, but it’s true.”
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.
