Harvard hosts a debate tournament each year that draws thousands of enthusiastic debaters from across the country to compete against others and ultimately have their dreams crushed. This year, one such group of debaters was your very own Tomball debate team.

Tomball debaters spent four days in the bitter Massachusetts cold to try to show their skills, with somewhat mixed results.

“We may not have won the tournament,” said debate captain Austin Dominguez. “But we had fun anyway, and that’s almost as good.”

While the majority of the team was eliminated within the initial rounds, Sarah Johnson managed to outlast the competition and break to octo-finals.

“Fun times, happiness, bonding, nervousness,” Johnson said of the experience. “My emotions were just all over the place. It was crazy.”

Her success can be seen in the form of a small trophy commemorating her achievement.

But debating was hardly the biggest concern for these unfortunate students stranded in the brutal weather.

“It was so cold that it’s really hard to explain with words,” claimed star debater Nathan Bolton. “Try to imagine being snap frozen in a block of solid ice and then being immersed in liquid nitrogen and then being bitten by an ice shark, and that should give you a decent approximation.”

With temperatures dipping well below zero degrees Fahrenheit, it’s no surprise that there were some problems for the Texan debaters, with some even implying that the cold was strongly related to their poor performance.

“I liked it there, but it’s just nice to be able to return to Texas,” Dominguez  said.

We welcome them back now, with congratulations, condolences, and warm Houston weather.