Community Impact Report 2025
Journey through the milestones that brought the speech and debate community together in 2025.
Inspiring Participation
We are proud to witness students and coaches deepen their skills and receive recognition through speech and debate. Over the 2024–2025 school year, our community competed, earned degrees, and lived out the highest standards of the NSDA Honor Code through dedicated service and strong academic performance.
Student and Coach Education
NSDA resources are designed to feel like an extra coach by your side. Throughout 2024–2025, our trusted tools helped teams save time and stay prepared, offering everything from lesson plans and textbooks to practice materials and final round videos to support your journey.
National Tournament
The National Tournament offered a week of connection, learning, and highlighting student voices. In the end, we crowned our 2025 national champions!
Funding
Keith West Memorial Fund
The Keith West Memorial Fund provided grants to eight schools in the fall of 2025. We look forward to honoring Keith’s life and legacy by expanding access to speech and debate through these annual grants.
Tate Road to Nationals Fund
The Road to Nationals Fund, founded by the William Woods Tate, Jr., Memorial Fund, is designed to help students attend the high school National Speech & Debate Tournament. The Road to Nationals Fund provides financial assistance to schools who are lacking financial resources to attend the tournament.
A $100,000 Surprise!
NSDA alum David Begnaud teamed up with Canva to surprise Deborah Garoui, a fierce speech and debate advocate, with $100,000! Watch the full moment »
Learn more about Deb and how she is creating an inclusive space for speech and debate students in Texas.
Creating Community
In 2025, we had the honor of celebrating 100 years of speech and debate, marking a century of empowering students to think critically, speak with confidence, and lead with purpose using the skills built through this activity. We reflect upon this milestone and the impact this community has made over the last decades and look forward to the bright future that lies ahead for the next century of speech and debate!
Thank you for another incredible year of speech and debate!
We look forward to seeing all that you will do this year! Learn more about our initiative to provide speech and debate opportunities to more schools and students in the next five years.