You enter a room and see four students, two on opposite sides. You sit down, get your flow paper, pens, timer and ballot sheet. One of the students grabs their laptop and approaches the podium. As soon as they start speaking, you start your timer and writing down each and every argument you hear. This is what most high school debaters do on the weekends when attending debate tournaments. For LHS, the SFL Debate team has done this every year, for 50 years.

“Debate is an activity that students debate over specified topics in a specific format,” said Tony Martinet, head coach of the SFL Debate team. “As an activity it is a way to teach students critical thinking and argumentation skills and a way to present themselves to others.”

Throughout the years SFL Debate has achieved many titles for LHS. One thing that separates SFL Debate from other activities in the state is that they compete on a national level. Out of 9,000 and hundreds of teams, over the years SFL Debate has won fourth, fifth and 15^th place in Policy Debate, as well as second, 10^th and 13^th top speakers in the country. Lincoln has also won many other national awards, such as 7^th place in Original Oratory and semi-finals in Foreign Extemporaneous Speaking, all finalists receiving awards out of hundreds of participants. Most notably, the program has only had five coaches over 50 years – an achievement that no other program has accomplished. One of the most prestigious awards that SFL Debate has received is the Bruno E. Jacobs award.

“The Bruno E. Jacobs award is the national sweepstakes award,” says Kim Maass, former SFL Debate coach. “There are roughly 9,000 high schools in America. The high schools that compete at NSDA tournament accumulate rounds. The more students [that schools] qualify, the more rounds they compete in, the better their students do at the national tournament, the more rounds they compete in. There are schools that have never won the award, never will win that award – Lincoln has won it twice.”

The excellence of debate at LHS does not seem to be ending any time soon. Through painstaking effort and winning title after title, SFL Debate has made it clear that the legacy that it has built over the years is here to stay. The activity has established a remarkable program in the past 50 years. The program shows a successful past and a promising future.

“To be successful in SFL debate, students can’t just strive for it – they have to commit themselves to living and competing to a standard of excellence at all times,” said Martinet. “We ascribe to the philosophy that the moment you choose to relax is the moment you start to lose. The program is all about [how] everything should be to a standard of excellence.”