2025 Coppell Speech & Debate Post-Season Fund

Hello all,

My name is SunHee Simon and I am creating this fund on behalf of my fellow directors (Dr. Jason Sykes and Mr. Eric Melin), our students, and our phenomenal booster club.

Coppell Speech & Debate has been a growing program that has reached astronomical numbers in student participation and overall achievement over the past 7 years. We've gone from 8 qualifiers for state in 2020 to 44 in 2025. We've also had 8 Championship Titles (CX State Champions '19, CX State Top Speaker '20, CX State Champion '21, PF State Champion '21, TOC School Sweepstakes '21, NSDA CX Top Speaker '21, World Schools State Champion '23, World Schools State Top Speaker '23).

While we certainly aren't complaining about growing success, our funding for the post-season has not been increasing alongside the program. This is becoming a hindrance to our students who work incredibly hard during the year but struggle to afford going to tournaments they deserve to be in. These tournaments tend to have higher entry fees and require longer hotel stays which quickly raises costs for us and our students.

As you all know, public schools nationwide are struggling with receiving funds. While schools are doing their best to stay afloat and keep teachers and students in appropriately, well-taken care of classrooms, funding for extracurriculars unfortunately are the first ones to be affected by cuts. Our 2025 TFA run (which brought numerous top 10 speaker awards and late elim showings) has left our funds insufficient for the Tournament of Champions, NSDA, and any round robin invites in between. Having public schools in these spaces is so important for expanding opportunities for those outside of private education. It also promotes positive competition between students from different backgrounds, improving the quality of our activity overall. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

All funds go directly to our booster account from here, however, if you'd like to avoid any fees from GoFundMe, you can also directly send money to our PayPal (linked here).

Thank you in advance for any help!

Signed Coppell Speech & Debate