Halfway through the season, the speech and debate team has won a significant number of trophies, although their members are few.

“In terms of the number of competitors the team is definitely smaller; however, I would also say that we’re having a successful year,” said team captain Jon Shapiro.

Last year, Shapiro made it to the final round in Congressional Debate at nationals, placing 13th overall and giving him an auto-qualification for nationals this year.

When asked about his plans for the season, Shapiro boldly replied: “I’m going to win nationals.”

The team has already gone to several prominent tournaments this season including the Yale Invitational, the New York City Invitational and the Glenbrooks Invitational. Many team members, including senior Alexander Machtay, juniors Sam Schaffer and Simon Perilla and eighth-grader Jared Shapiro have won awards at these tournaments.

“We are aiming to hit a record number of National Forensic League (NFL) points this year, which are awarded based on performance in speeches,” senior Brenna Rosen wrote in an email. NFL points are used to rank teams relative to one another.

The team is a member of the National Speech and Debate Association’s 100 Club, meaning that it is one of the top 100 teams in the nation in terms of points scored.

“There are a lot of teams that have lots and lots of kids that don’t do so hot…We have a few kids who do really well and earn a lot of points,” said coach Nicole Majercak, who received a diamond award for coaching this past season. “It’s not exactly a rebuilding year, but it feels very much like one.”

Although the team has had promising results so far, a number of debaters graduated last year, and the team has struggled to replenish their ranks.

“I’m going to have to do my best to spread the word about the team and the benefits about debate not only for academics, but for your entire life,” junior Simon Perilla said.

“We have fewer people to do research, and it is harder to win the team awards because they’re based [partly] on number of people,” Shapiro said.

Majercak thinks some factors that dissuade people from joining the team is the conception of time-consuming practices, and the fact that the season has already started.

“A lot of people assume that if they haven’t joined at this point, they can’t. But that’s not true,” Majercak said. “First of all, students who are interested do not have to attend every single tournament.”