The competitive spirit of debate lives within seniors Vaden Kumar and Riley Ney. Kumar and Ney competed against many schools and came out on top as the state debate winners. They have put in years of hard work. The help and guidance of the coaches Thomas Babock and Robert Egan help Kumar and Ney compete at higher levels.
“I was a sixth grader with nothing better to do and I was tired of doing robotics competitions, I gotta do something better,” Ney said. “Debate prep is having to write three essays a week every week.
The amount of academic work it takes to prep a debate tournament; I’m going to equivocate it to three to four essays a week.”
Not only does the physical and academic work take a toll on people, but the social and energy aspects of debating play a role in the tournament.
“We were probably spending like an hour a day on it [Preparing debates on their off season], but for this upcoming tournament this weekend, me and Riley have both been spending four plus hours a day on preparing documents. You are sitting there doing 24 hours of debating over the span of 48 hours,” Kumar said.
Even though they have experience debating, some problems they can not overcome.
“We adapted to the judges because some of them have no idea what’s going on. Some of them have been doing this since before I was born. We had one judge that was our assistant coach’s ex-girlfriend’s dad, and that was a very peculiar round because he couldn’t help us at all,” Kumar said.
Kumar and Ney have spent years debating to win state, and the coaches have spent time and there expertise to the competition as well. Egan brings home the gold with his many years of coaching and his first year at Newton
“As a coach, it’s always gratifying because you see all of the work – from the beginning, when things are rough and there are cobwebs to work out, to the middle when your momentum is picking up, to the end when all of the work and the research and the strategizing and the prepping has paid off. I was excited for them to win Newton’s first championship in 12 years,” Egan said.
As they compete through the tournament, even with the amount of experience and skill they have, it is still a close call for competitors. Sometimes, they are faced challenges they have no way to prepare themselves for.
“It is just a very uphill battle with the current topic of intellectual property. Copyrights, patents, and trademarks. And should we strengthen them?” senior Kumar said.

After all the problems and potential threats to them winning the debate, the feeling of celebration was replaced with a lack of energy and relief.
“We were unbearably tired. Like it was like 11 p.m. We had been waiting for hours. It felt better like the next day, but in the moment you know, we were cooked,” Ney said.
All the years of hard work, preparation, and determination have led them to success.“Do debate, it’s fun. It’s better than pretty much anything in the school, and you’ll have more fun doing it,” Kumar said.