The speech and debate team will host its first national tournament this weekend, featuring debaters from thirty-seven high schools nationwide.The tournament, which begins Friday after school and ends Sunday afternoon, will have two debate events: Lincoln-Douglas, which features one-on-one philosophical debate, and student Congress, which models how the U.S. Congress debates. Ten students, including Whitman freshman Conrad Mascarehas and junior Peter Jorgensen, will participate in Congress.

While the team has been talking about hosting a tournament for several years, a lack of funding and advertising connections caused them to put the tournament off.

“It’s easy to have a lot of talk but no action,” club president Nikhil Gupta said. “This year we had a lot of time and more money so we were able to do it.”

To finance the tournament, the team sold advertising to business magazines, like the Economist and Capital Business.

“They’re basically paying us to distribute their magazines at the tournament, which is a solid source of income,” coach Ari Parker said.

In addition to the magazines, the team also received donations from places like Cava, Whole Foods and Chipotle. These donations enabled them to save money and will also help to provide the debaters with food during the tournament.

With over thirty Whitman debaters participating in the tournament, the team is optimistic that the tournament will be a success.

“We hope that this will be a successful tournament,” Jorgensen said. “The fundraising will give us the opportunity to hire more coaches and send more people to tournaments.”

With success of their first tournament, they’ll be able to attract more schools at next year’s tournament, Parker said.

Depending on the success of this year’s tournament, Whitman may be able to offer “bids” for the prestigious Tournament of Champions next year. Students must qualify for the TOC by receiving bids for placing highly in at least two elimination rounds at national tournaments.

Based on the performance of debaters at this year’s Whitman-hosted tournament, the TOC committee will decide whether the school’s tournament will be able to award bids next year.

The team has depended on the development of its contacts across the country and their status as a school with a strong debate team.

“Because we have national contacts, we were able to set it up,” Gupta said. “We also have a lot of kids coming because we have that standard of excellence as a debate team.”