Freshman year is a difficult time for everyone — adjusting to harder classes, making new friends, trying to figure out which clubs and sports to join — but what if what you were looking for wasn’t offered in any of the school’s extracurricular activities? The answer was easy for Maya Vondrasek and Megan King, who created their own club: a debate team.

Vondrasek and King are now sophomores, but it all began back in freshman year. “I really like the Good Wife and they debate and are awesome…I really liked debating and [Naz] didn’t have a debate team…so I thought, we should start that,” Vondrasek explained. King has her own reasons for starting the club, “I want to become a lawyer so I thought it was a good preview for that, and if anyone else wants to, it’s a good preview.”

Vondrasek elaborated on the process involved, saying, “[Megan] saw me going into Mr. Jurassas’ room and talking about it, and she asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to start a debate team.’ Then I went to Mrs. Hawkins as well and Megan asked if I was still doing it and I said yes, and over the summer after golf practice she came over to my house and we wrote the proposal to start it together.”

So why should students considering joining this new club?

“I don’t think that Naz really offers anything that is like a debate team. I know they have Model UN, but…I feel like debate team allows you to choose your own opinion on it,” Vondrasek suggested.

King and Vondrasek hope to participate in a few competitions this year as representatives for the new club. In doing so, the two also hope to lay a foundation that is stable enough to allow the club to thrive for not only their high school careers, but for countless years past their graduation.