On Friday, March 28, students will have an early release because Lincoln Southwest is hosting the State Debate Tournament at the school on both Friday and Saturday.

“We do the early release so we can get started earlier so that we can end early enough and ensure that the out of town teams can get home at a decent time,” debate coach Mrs.Toni Heimes said. “This is the state tournament so it’s a longer tournament. We run more rounds than we typically would on a typical Saturday-only tournament.”

Students were first informed of the change in schedule on Saturday, March 1, through an email containing the news for March and events coming up for the month and then again in the morning announcements during the week of the tournament. The schedule will follow the pep-rally or old Professional Learning Communities (PLC) schedule so each block will be 75 minutes instead of the usual 90 minutes, with the exception of Block 0, which will still be 45 minutes. The school day will end at 2:03 p.m..

“Since I’m one of the people competing at State Debate, I won’t be doing much relaxing because I’ll have to compete on Friday and Saturday,” freshman Henry Fuller said. “ However I am happy that I made it to State and I’m very prepared to compete on Friday and Saturday.”

The LSW Debate team has 14 students competing at the State Debate Tournament in the events Lincoln Douglas Debate, Public Forum Debate and Congressional Debate. Some ways that students who don’t have debate may choose to spend their time relaxing, hanging out with friends, studying or participating in activities or sports.

“I have a tennis game after school that day around four, so I’ll be doing that,” freshman Ivy Srb said. “But after that, I’ll probably do some studying and then just relax for the weekend.”