In the world of speech and debate, the Cornfield Clash is quickly becoming a must-attend event for homeschool students throughout the Midwest.
From Thursday, March 13, to Saturday, March 15, Concordia University will host talented young speech and debate students. This will be the second year of the tournament, in which about 90 students compete across 12 speech categories and three debate categories.
Students from Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Arkansas and Illinois attended last year’s event.
The Cornfield Clash is in the StoaUSA league, which is a Christian homeschool speech and debate league for students from seventh to 12th grade. Cornfield Clash tournament director Kristin McKinnon helped start StoaUSA in Nebraska after moving from Seattle four years ago. She leads Forge, a speech and debate team of 22 students out of Grand Island.
Joe Davis, then-head coach of Concordia’s speech and debate team, coached and judged events for StoaUSA in Nebraska, where he connected with McKinnon’s two sons and recruited them to his team. He also hosted workshops for Forge students at Concordia. When the idea for a Nebraska tournament emerged, Forge turned to Davis, and Concordia gladly stepped in as the venue.
McKinnon said the university has been welcoming and accommodating.
At the end of every StoaUSA tournament, there is a late-night ballot party, typically at a restaurant, where students receive their awards and ballots with feedback from judges. Since Seward is a smaller town and places are not open as late, Concordia hosts the party.
“We had dancing and root beer floats and a popcorn bar, and we just did it all at Concordia,” McKinnon said. “The kids really enjoyed that it was a small, cute town and the way they just got to hang out on campus.”
Forge member Gabi Meier is competing in six speech events and two debate events in the tournament, which is the maximum number allowed.
Meier said she got great advice from the judges at the last tournament she competed in and used it to tweak some of her speeches. She said she is looking forward to presenting the speeches and is excited for the tournament.
“I really enjoy the community of people that they have at the tournament,” Meier said. “I really like connecting with different people that do speech and debate and have the same interests. I also really enjoy having the competition between everybody and working and improving all my speeches and really growing in that. It's a lot of fun. “
McKinnon is looking for more judges from the community to volunteer for the event. McKinnon said judges can volunteer for as few or as many rounds as they would like. They do not need to have any prior experience in speech or debate and can get all the information they need at a 25-minute orientation before the round begins.
Four state senators and a Seward City Council member will be among the judges.
Thomas McKinnon, Kristin’s son who is now on the Concordia Speech and Debate team, has been judging tournaments for two years now and said he has enjoyed getting to see people improve from last year and use the feedback he gave them.
“I think it's really fun to listen to a lot of different opinions from these kids because they have some creative opinions and creative speeches,” he said. “It makes you think about a lot of different ideas, and a lot of it's really abstract and fun to listen to – especially debate because there's things you never would have thought that someone would have been able to make an argument out of.”
Sign up to be a judge at https://stoahub.org/tournament/cornfield-clash-ne-2025. Food and drink will be provided to all judges.
Speech and debate helps students develop skills, such as communication and responsibility, that they will use for the rest of their lives, regardless of the career field they enter. McKinnon said she loves watching kids’ confidence soar and seeing them grow in different speech categories.
“When I first joined speech and debate, I hated public speaking,” Meier said. “I was not a public speaker, and I hated anything that had to do with talking in front of people. But, speech and debate really helped push me outside of my comfort zone, and I've gotten a lot more comfortable with public speaking. The community and everybody there is so encouraging, and it really just helps you grow so much.”
McKinnon said she enjoys watching the students develop their skills from tournament to tournament and year to year. Those in the top 30% of their event at the end of the tournament get a check mark, and two check marks in the same event from two separate tournaments gets kids into the national competition for that event.
Nationals will be in May in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this year.
“I’m most looking forward to all the students gathering together and watching them get to go do what they love,” McKinnon said. “There’s a lot of kids that just love this. It's their passion.”
