Featured photo by Noah McLane
Story by Noah McLane
MTSU Speech and Debate is the university’s oldest active club – 113 years to be exact. It was here when MTSU had only 125 students and 19 faculty, was the first co-ed debate team in Tennessee and helped legislators pass the first state law requiring children to use child safety restraints in automobiles.
However, 12 years ago, the team was on its way to becoming a memory. It had one member, and the university needed to decide what to do to save its oldest club.
So, in 2012, MTSU hired Patrick “Pat” Richey and Natonya Listach.
Richey, the head coach, is a grumpy-looking man with a bushy beard and thick-rimmed glasses pressed tightly against the bridge of his nose.
He talks about speech and debate with a passionate reverence, and his students admire him for his ability to illustrate the art of debate.
Speech and debate hooked Richey early in life, being first acquainted in middle school.
“They offered one of those: either take debate or take theater,” Richey said as he leaned in closer, “I don’t act so good, so that’s sort of how I took [to debate].”
The bond between Richey and debate stayed strong. He even participated in the International Public Debate Association’s email debate tournament as he served in Iraq as a Civil Affairs Sergeant from 2002 to 2004.
Richey is also the IPDA’s historian, was an IPDA governing board member (2006-2009) (2012-2020) and is the founder/editor of the IPDA Journal (2020-present).
Natonya Listach is the individual event coach but is better known for her patience, graciousness and powerful public speaking.
For her, coaching is an opportunity to see the amazing happen.
Listach is fueled by “watching the growth and seeing what [students] do with their lives after they find out that they’re actually good at this thing.”
“We get a lot of students who come in and say, I’ll never be able to, I’m just a really quiet person in general, I don’t know how to put an argument together. And as soon as they get through the first season, they realize that they’re more confident and more competent than they think they are,” said Listach.
She earned the admiration of students with an approachable demeanor, one-on-one coaching style and what no less than four team members say are the best hugs in the Northern Hemisphere.
Richey and Listach have been inspiring students for years; recently, that inspiration struck Liam Boardwine, current team captain.
“I was in line for the fencing team, and our coach, Pat, called me over and said, ‘Hey, that line is kind of long. Do you want to talk to us while you wait?’ And I was like, ‘sure,’” said Boardwine. “[Richey] was like, ‘you look like you could be a good debater.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but I signed my name down, and I was—just kind of like, ‘alright, I’ll do this. I’ll try it out, I guess, yeah.’”
Joining debate offered Boardwine an opportunity to explore new passions.
“Pat and Natonya have helped me actually try to figure out what I want to do…I want to become a debate coach now. I want to become like a communications professor and debate coach,” said Boardwine. “That’s my goal.”
Despite the pair’s collective range of accomplishments, there was still the challenge of reviving a club from the brink of death.
Unfortunately, it was also a separation point from the team of the past to the team seen today, according to current team vice president and chief of comedy John Adurojn.
“We lost a large portion of our history…during the period of changing coaches, and I think it was kind of a [mishandling] of documents, so we don’t really have much access to the bulk of our history,” said Adurojn.
The club and team’s known history is preserved on the speech and debate team’s webpage.
“Honor over Victory”
Richey and Listach started in 2012 with a blank slate and an empty roster.
So, they went to the usual places to recruit debaters and speech givers “[by] looking at the theater, looking at political science, looking at communication…looking at fields where people are more likely to do it, but also, because it is a university-sponsored event, it [was] open to all majors,” said Richey.
The pair worked to establish a culture centered around respect, leadership and learning from the very beginning.
“I put an expectation on folks who have been on the team,” said Richey, “I put a lot of emphasis on seniors helping novices…once that cycle got put in place, it worked really well.”
He also established a new team motto, “veneratio pro victoria,” which is Latin for “honor before victory.”
Richey says winning is never the priority, but rather to teach students skills they can use long after graduation.
“I personally believe that at the end of the day, if you learn the skills, you get good at it, you’ll win,” Richy said. “There’s no formula about winning, no pressure. You just have to try.”
The team’s resilience shone brightly when the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world.
With society seeming to sink into chaos in the background, as few as ten people would regularly attend Zoom meetings, and debate tournaments held over video communication platforms were a headache.
However, Listach used the opportunity to reconnect with her original goals from when she started coaching.
“It gave us time to reevaluate what we were doing as a club and what we’re actually trying to teach,” said Listach.
Speakers had to record their speeches and then send them to judges; this allowed Listach to sit with students and watch their speeches together.
“I think it really helped the team bond because we weren’t going and hanging out with other teams…we were literally coming over to Jones Hall or staying in dorms and talking through the computer,” said Listach.
However, just like in 2012, the team adapted to the circumstances and came out of it like Achilles emerging from the River Styx; impenetrable.
MTSU Speech and Debate, 2024
Today, the team is adaptive, battle-hardened, and respected globally by the debate community.
This semester, the team earned second place in the overall sweepstakes at the Crimson Classic debate at the University of Alabama and third place overall team sweepstakes at the Southeastern Forensics League Tournament #2 at Tennessee State University.
MTSU also hosted the Irish Times National Debate champions for the past several years (the team did not visit from 2020-2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
The champions win a trip from Ireland to the United States and always make sure MTSU is their first stop on their American tour.
In October 2024, hundreds of sharply dressed students, armed with legal pads and kitchen timers, descended on MTSU’s campus from all over the country for the Pejevar Debate Tournament at MTSU.
“It’s a great community, and it’s one of those things [that] improves you overall as a person. Like, that’s cliche to say, but it really does improve your speaking. I used to have really bad social anxiety, but when you’re putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation, you improve, and it’s fun,” Boardwine said about the team.
From that discomfort, great things can come.
“[Debate] has helped me with, like, every aspect of my life. It just makes me able to talk to people, and that’s something a lot of people don’t always know how to do,” said Sage Robinson, a sophomore who has been on the team since their freshman year.
Anessa Loftin, a freshman debater who proudly ran this year’s costume contest at the Pejevar Tournament, said the team “has given me the chance to make friends. Maybe it’s just me, but the freshman experience has been pretty tough, you know, trying to make friends [and] adjusting, but all the people that I’ve met on the team have helped me through that process and given me a sense of community.”
Processing Grief
No one knew it, but the community Loftin spoke about that weekend was about to get struck with tragedy.
The sudden death of one of the team’s newer members, Serenity Birdsong, was a moment that cut deep for the close-knit group.
This is a group that travels and stays in hotels together. It is a place where LGBTQ+ folk are welcomed with open arms, as many of the current team members identify as queer.
According to messages obtained by Sidelines, the team’s group chat immediately went into support mode.
Members shared resources, offered an ear and organized a gathering for the team to just be together. One member even offered rides to their off-campus teammates.
“We met here in the debate office, and alumni brought in some pizza, and we just kind of chilled and didn’t do anything for about four hours,” said Richey.
The team was undeniably a light in Birdsong’s life.
Elizabeth Cannan-Knight worked with Birdsong as president and vice president of MT Lambda, respectively.
“Before she died, we talked for a while on the fourth floor while she ate lunch. She really did love speech and debate, it’s something she talked about for a while,” said Cannan-Knight in a Facebook post.
This tragedy hurt the team, but it showed how resilient its members are, thanks to a familial culture molded by Richey and Listach.
The records may be lost to history, but it is safe to say that if MTSU Speech and Debate can make it through these past several years, the team can last another 113 years.
Noah McLane is the lead news reporter for MTSU Sidelines.
To contact the News Editor, email [email protected].
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