Lillie Ouellette-Howitz is a senior at South and a member of South’s debate team. She started debating freshman year.

“Then I went to debate camp in the summer at Augsburg with the Minnesota Urban Debate League, and had a really great time and kept on going with it after that,” she said.

Ouellette-Howitz’s debating career includes winning the Minnesota High School State Debate Tournament and the second

Annual High School Economic Debate Tournament, held in the the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas last fall.

“[The economic debate] was an interesting format of debate,” said Ouellette-Howitz. “It wasn’t policy debate…[and] we only have policy debate at South.”

Policy debate is more of evidence based debate-fast paced and more concerned with evidence.

In contrast, economic debate is more slow-paced with less evidence. This didn’t raise Ouellette-Howitz’s hopes.

“I wasn’t really expecting to very well at this tournament,” admitted Ouellette-Howitz. “It was really a last minute thing, I wasn’t really planning on qualifying for the tournament at all.”

Even though Ouellette-Howitz won this national tournament, she isn’t especially proud of the win. “[The economic debate] overall was a less important tournament, just in that it wasn’t the usual type of debate that I do,” said Ouellette-Howitz.

In economic debates, one doesn’t have a partner, which Ouellette-Howitz is used to. So she went solo for the debate.

In policy debates Ouellette-Howitz always has a partner by her side. “Trace [Thompson] and I have been debating all year,” she said. “We actually won the State Tournament in January, and that was a much exciting win for me because it was something I was much more committed to, it was in an area of debate I put more work into.”