With two tournaments and a number of accolades under their belt, the Speech and Debate Union heads out this weekend for Middle Tennessee State University’s SDU tournament.
Murray State’s SDU traveling team has spent this semester honing their preparation and oration skills in practice twice a week. Ryan Goke, the SDU coach and an associate professor of organizational communication and leadership, said their two competitions so far — the Big Apple, a virtual tournament hosted by Queens University, and the Crimson Classic, an in-person tournament at the University of Alabama — allowed the team to see the payoff of their hard work.
“My students have put in so much work to really polish their own skills,” he said. “I think they’ve started seeing the success of how they stack up against other powerhouse schools.”
Coleton Boyd, a sophomore physics and mathematics double major, joined SDU in early September. Along with fellow novice SDU members Essabella Voss and Hailey Meshew, Boyd attended the Commonwealth Honors Academy at Murray State in 2024, where he took a class with Goke. He said he has enjoyed the experience and opportunities the SDU has given him.
“I love all my teammates, and I’m very glad to be friends with them and talk outside of debate,” Boyd said. “I didn’t necessarily have a real sense of community on campus before I joined (SDU).”
Goke said the Crimson Classic is a “grueling” tournament with a $10,000 endowment for the overall winner in speech events, drawing in schools from across the nation. Novices Boyd, Meshew and Voss focused on debate events while varsity members Samuel Harless, Caleb McCurren and Samuel Miller took on speech events. McCurren took sixth place in his speech event with a dramatic interpretation piece. Meshew was awarded Top Novice in the After Dinner Speaking event. Voss and Boyd both advanced to the quarter finals in the novice debate division, with Boyd winning the final round’s judges’ votes in a 3-0 decision and earning fifth place in novice division speakers. Boyd said his teammates were instrumental in preparing him for a debate topic he had little background in.
“You can get (a topic) you know nothing about, and after 30 minutes of prep, you’re an expert,” he said. “That’s going to help any kind of literacy you have in the media, and it’s helped me be a more well-informed citizen. That’s one thing about debate that I don’t think gets talked about enough.”
Murray State’s SDU placed third in the overall debate sweepstakes. Goke said points are assigned every round, with winners earning three points while the other competitors earn one.
“The part that’s most impressive to me is we got third, but (the) other two teams had probably around 10 to 15 students,” Goke said. “If I have 15 students who lose, that’s still 15 points. If I have three students who all win, that’s only nine points. These students had a 63% win record between them. That’s the reason they were able to rank at all.”
The team’s strategy going into the next tournament is to pair each varsity member with a novice for MPDA-style debate.
Boyd said it is an opportunity to improve trust and communication in the team while still focusing on self-improvement.
“I want to make sure I’m improving individually, even if that means at the next tournament, I don’t do as good as I’ve done in the past,” he said. “I’m not as concerned with taking home a trophy as much as getting better.”
After returning from the MTSU tournament, the SDU’s last event of the year will be the Dean’s Debate on Thursday, Nov. 6, at Murray State. Goke said the event is a good showcase of the skills his team has been building and a means to make speech and debate events more accessible to the campus community with interactive features.
More information on SDU events can be found at www.murraystatesdu.org.
