Despite only being established a mere four years ago, the Bethany Speech and Debate program is well developed and highly successful.
Coach Michael Yeakey established the young team in 2009, due to heightened student interest and Yeakey’s opinion that the school could support a successful program. He has a passion for helping students learn and hone skills that will help their future endeavors in life. Speech and debate teach some useful life skills such as public speaking and analyzing current events. Yeakey agrees, “Debate offers students a chance to bring critical thinking skills to bear on real-life issues. The ideas that are considered require research, composition (of speeches), and a grasp of the issues being debated. Speech events give students the opportunity to hone a plethora of speaking skills.”
This year, the speech and debate season is just getting started. Debate starts in October and goes until January, and speech has roughly the same number of meets but the season spans from November to March. Qualifying for the state tournament in speech is like sectionals in a varsity sport. This year there between 18- 20 students who expressed interest in competing at the high school level.
Michael Yeakey says that this year he is looking forward to a large debate team, with ten debaters being the largest in Bethany history. Teacher Josh Weaver is also helping with the debate team, has he has congressional debate background. Yeakey is looking forward to Josh’s energy that he will bring to the program. There is also a lot of underclassman interest, which will be good in the coming years as the program continues to develop.
Students are looking forward to the coming competitions, with excitement spreading even to the middle school. A developing program this year, the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students are gaining interest in speech and debate. Eliza Stoltzfus and Jesse Bontreger are the coaches that are going to be working with the kids and starting the program, but Eliza says, “I would give most of the credit to Michael Yeakey for getting the program off its feet.”
The idea for a middle school program came out of the need for more after school activities for the Lower School that aren’t athletics. There had been some interest, with a few kids visiting for an after school activity with the high school, and there are currently about seven students interested at the younger level. Yeakey thought that Eliza Stoltzfus’ background in speech and theater would be a valuable asset to the developing program.
There are currently two middle school meets on the schedule and Eliza is excited because “there’s a lot of potential in the group…and the fact that there’s interest is great. The experience will make them even better in high school.” Also helping coach is recent graduate Jesse Bontreger (‘13), who was a member of the Speech and Debate team in the high school. He is looking forward to being involved, saying, “I loved speech when I competed, and I love teaching kids, so this is a great combination of those two things. I enjoy working with these kids and they have a lot of great potential.”
WIth meets at both high school and middle school levels, the Bethany speech and debate program is off to an exciting start this season. Michael Yeakey, Eliza Stoltzfus, and Jesse Bontreger are all excited about their students and the potential they bring to the program. Good luck speech and debaters!
~Katie Hurst