Walking up to the stage, warm bright lights hit your face and a wave of silence falls over the crowd. Speech and Debate competitors face the challenge of public speaking that might terrify some, but has become a passion for students across the country.

This is a record breaking for the McGuinness program as 11 students have qualified for Nationals. Speech and Debate Coach Lori Crews says that the competition in Richmond, Va. is the biggest one for Speech and Debate.

“It is by far the biggest and most well known and most prestigious national level competition,” Crews said. “Each event will have somewhere between 250 and 300 students compete one in it across the United States, and then also some events have students invited to compete from other countries like China, for example, or India.”

Speech and Debate President Eve Moen is one of the 11 students that qualified for Nationals. Moen and the other 10 qualifiers say that the reason so many people qualified this year is that they started thinking about the District Tournament earlier.

“This meant that we had more time to get critiques from coaches and teammates to make our pieces better and win more spots to Nationals,” Moen said.

Preparing for Nationals is a long process of working on your piece and getting feedback on it, similarly to how they prepare for the State tournament.

“Something that is different from State is that we will also work with other teams from Oklahoma that are going to Nationals since we aren’t directly competing against them by giving and getting their critiques,” Moen said. “I always think that the best way to encourage teammates is to make sure they know that no matter what happens it is still good that they competed and did the best they can.”

As a senior, Moen does her best to give advice to underclassmen that she has learned from her mentor and years of competing.

“One of the best ways to go into any competition is to make sure to take each round as if it was your first and last and give it your absolute all, and also to not let your beginning rounds of a tournament be your ‘warm up’ rounds because it will bite you later,” Moen said. “I would also tell them to expect to see some very different pieces than they are used to, but to not let it get to them because they deserve to be there.”