During the 2023-24 school year, Jesuit High School Sacramento restarted its Debate Club after a long absence following COVID-19. In the three years since, the team has made a strong return.

At their State Qualifier Tournament this year, the Debate Club won the Small School Sweepstakes. On April 17-19, Seth Eriki ’26, Bobby Price V ’26, and Nick Baltazar ’29 will be competing at the States competition, and later in the month, Nick and Connor Frings ’29 will be going to the National Qualifier tournament. 

The Debate Club did not immediately excel following its restart. Seth, who has been in Debate Club since its resurgence in his sophomore year, remembers Jesuit debate looking much different just a few years ago.

“Our first tournament was a complete and utter mess,” Seth said. “When I joined, [Jesuit’s Team] was a bunch of new people, so no one knew the rules. They were not agreed upon, and it was a mess of kids trying to argue for ideas which they had no idea about.”

For Jesuit, being new to the debate world, having few members and competing against larger and more experienced schools made starting out difficult.

“It was like the wild west of debate tournaments,” Bobby said. “Granite Bay and Oak Ridge have dozens and dozens of members and heritage, and they had previous members who had gone before and knew the rules. We didn’t have any of that. We did not know what we were doing. And it was tough at first, kind of really just being thrown into the fire.”

Seth, however, viewed this disadvantage as a source of motivation for turning Debate Club into the competitive team it is now.

“Especially because we were a new team, and at first we weren’t particularly good, the idea that people thought that we were stupid or that we were just a very bad team, it deeply hurt,” Seth said. “That’s part of the reason why I did all my research in the first place, is I didn’t want Jesuit High School Debate to be known as a bad team. I wanted us to be one of the best teams.”

One of the ways the Debate Club has excelled is by realizing where their strengths lie. There are two types of debating Jesuit has practiced: Parliamentary Debate, and Lincoln-Douglas debate. Parliamentary is focused on quick critical thinking, allowing little time to prepare, while Lincoln-Douglas incorporates large amounts of prepared research before a tournament. 

Inherently, large schools like Granite Bay, Oak Ridge, and Davis have an advantage in Lincoln-Douglas debate because they can dedicate many more students to research than Jesuit. 

“Because of the big difference in manpower, we have started to move away from Lincoln-Douglas more into parliamentary,” Bobby said. “But we allow people who want to do Lincoln-Douglas the ability to do it. We allow them to do it, and if they find a sense in it, they find a sense in it.”

But, this year’s freshman standouts, Nick and Connor, may allow for the Debate Club to return to competing in more Lincoln-Douglas debates soon.

“Connor Frings and Nick Baltazar, they are both extremely intelligent,” Bobby said. “They debated in middle school, so they have the repertoire necessary for debate. But you need that background, especially for Lincoln-Douglas, as it does get quite technical quite fast. Lincoln-Douglas is very hard to start off in, especially in the position we are in. And this year now, into the third year of the club’s new existence, we have a very strong foundation amongst our underclassmen, so that’s a positive sign for the future.”

In its three years since COVID-19, Jesuit Debate Club has quickly grown into a competitive team which knows how to win.

“We learned how to, I wouldn’t say play the game necessarily, but we learned how to exist and ultimately thrive within it,” Bobby said.

With a successful year under their belt, the Debate Club is looking to place highly in the States and the National Qualifier Tournaments.