District 21-AAA CX Debate was hosted at First Baptist Church Wednesday. Three Buffalo teams went head-to-head with teams from Leon, Trinity and Elkhart; juniors Kendall Morales and Kaci Allen took second place and will advance to state competition in March.

Both of the other Buffalo teams won rounds during prelims, with sophomore Evan Grisham and freshman Lilah Molina missing semi-finals by two speaker points.

“I thought it went well; we have improved quite a bit from last year,” Grisham said. “It was a bit disappointing, though, that we missed finals by only two speaker points.”

District was a challenge for all of the students, especially since most of the team is new this year.

“Our third round was hard because it was our first time running one of our new cases,” freshman Nadia Garcia said. “But it was a good experience for us; I’ll definitely be sticking with debate.”

The rest of the speech team attended as official timers..

“It was fun getting to watch the debates,” junior Abby Smith, who does LD debate, said. “I got to see some of my friends act in ways that they normally don’t.”

With a state-qualifying win for the day, the team was pleased with the results overall.

“It was so exciting when we found out that we were going to state, I think we were both a little shocked,” junior Kaci Allen said. “We have to work on getting ready for state now, and hopefully will be coming home with state medals.”