Introducing this year’s Chicago Debates swag!

We are working with our vendors on swag for this year and have exciting new designs that reflect our new brand and the energy our students bring to debate.

We expect to have these ready for tournaments in December, possibly late November.

We encourage all debaters to attend one tournament to see what our debate community is like. After that tournament, we want them to continue and attend 3 tournaments overall – our norm over the last few years, which the academic research shows is a key marker of when students become critical thinkers and show larger academic growth after working with our coaches for over 3-4 months.

We realize the recent strike may limit the number of chances for students to attend 3 tournaments, so we’ve revised the swag levels somewhat this season:

Students who attend their first tournament will receive a Chicago Debates sticker and a button of their choice.

Students who attend their second tournament will get this fabulous shirt, our best design yet!

And each of our coaches will get one of these shirts very soon – wear yours to tournaments and motivate your kids to earn their own!

Note the colors will look brighter on the shirts than on your screen. We hope your teams will find the swag motivating and will help us build our Chicago Debates community throughout the city.