The upper school speech and debate squad reached a new milestone, as the team is now ranked 10th in the country and first in Missouri.

Upper school speech and debate coach Justin Smith said, "With nearly three thousand debate programs nationwide, being ranked in the top 10 is an incredible achievement for our squad. It's even more impressive when you consider that all the other programs in the top 100 have hundreds of more students than we do at Pembroke Hill, most have thousands more.

"Missouri is one of the top states in the nation for speech and debate with nearly every top-performing school fielding a debate team. Being at the top of these rankings is a reflection of the work of our 90 students and our incredibly dedicated coaches. This would not be possible without the work of our director of forensics Hannah Draut, our assistant director of forensics Bryson Kenworthy, our assistant director of policy debate Parker Hopkins and our director of mock trial Phil Laddin ’13. I'm incredibly grateful to work with such an incredible group of dedicated educators."