This school year, Lakeville resident Alice Yi will be one of 12 high school students representing the United States in international debate competitions as part of the USA Debate Team.
The National Speech & Debate Association announced the new team last month. The Lakeville South High School senior is the only team member from Minnesota.
“It’s a huge honor. It feels like the culmination of a lot of hard work and a lot of learning,” Yi said. “I think it’s just a really great chance to sort of step away from purely academic learning and have debates and discussions that are a little more grounded in the real world.”
The team does a style of debate called World Schools Debate, where teams of three to five people debate three at a time in support of or against a motion, for example whether tourist destinations should limit the number of tourists that can visit or whether or not housing should be a guaranteed right.
Yi said that this debate format, which is used by students around the world, is a bit different from other styles of debate that are mostly limited to tournaments in the United States.
“World Schools as an event theoretically prioritizes both style and your argumentation and your strategy,” she said. “It’s more just about getting your core ideas and your core arguments across, but also being able to communicate with any kind of audience, because you’ll have people who … speak English as a second, third or fourth language.”
She started participating in her school’s speech and debate teams in ninth grade. Last year, she was accepted onto the USA Debate Development Team, where debaters further familiarize themselves with the World Schools Debate style and learn how to spread the debate format in their schools and communities.
This year, there’s also a Minnesota student on the USA Debate Development Team. Hannah Bubb is a junior at The Blake School in Minneapolis.
Yi said that getting accepted on the development team did not guarantee her a spot on the national team. Many of the current national team members were not involved with the development team.
Yi applied for the USA Debate Team this year. Her application included describing her previous debate tournament experiences, a written essay portion and videos of Yi giving speeches that she would give in a hypothetical debate round.
Yi said she’s always been interested in public speaking.
“Even in elementary school, whenever we had class presentations and things like that, I always thought it was really exciting, really interesting,” she said.
The team has practice once a week and competes in either domestic or international debate competitions once a month.
Yi said outside of practice, the team members spend hours preparing and researching their debate topics.
“It’s a lot of work that you have to put in, and long nights and hours and it’s really tough,” she said. “I always just really wanted to do debate … but I think World Schools made me enjoy it even more.”
She adds that one of the rewarding parts of her debate career has been meeting and collaborating with debaters from all across the country — and world.
“There’s just a little bit of a different feeling, stepping into a round and knowing that there are two to four other people who are on the same team as you, they have your back and you’re working together,” she said.
The team will be representing the United States at the annual World Schools Debating Championships in Kenya in July 2026. Yi said she’s excited to be representing Minnesota and “showing everyone what we’re all about.”
“People ask me where I’m from, and I’m like, ‘Minnesota,’ and they’re like, ‘Great, where’s that?’ So I think it’s a really fun experience giving Minnesota a little bit of visibility,” she said.
Besides debate, Yi is also an award-winning artist and has been submitting pieces to the Minnesota State Fair for years. This year, she submitted watercolors, charcoal drawings and paintings, winning three first-place awards and one grand-prize award among 11th graders.
Yi said that her passion for debate and her passion for art come from the same root: a love of communication.
“I think that it’s definitely the key to unlocking a lot of doors,” she said. “It’s the communication that really bridges what you have or what someone else has isolated in their mind, in their own space, to everyone else and having everyone else be able to see and recognize and appreciate whatever that is.”
