My school doesn’t have a Speech and Debate team, nor do I live in Ohio- so take this with a grain of salt.
Starting a club in general:
Find a sponsor. Your best bet for a S/D team would probably be a Journalism/English teacher, but any teacher would do. You most likely need a coach to register/chaperone for competitions.
Advertise! Figure out who likes to talk and argue and get them to join.
Speech and Debate in Ohio:
Could you look into this thing: http://www.ohssl.org/ ? It looks like they have competitions, and you could maybe even join (?)
@wonderfulreads Thank you! I already have an advisor in mind; I’ll ask her about being an advisor for next year once we go back to school. Also, thank you for the links; I probably should have Googled a bit more before posting this, but what’s done is done.
Debate is a pretty prominent fixture at my school but I would definitely talk to some teachers in english or social studies to see if they had any ideas, as far as students, and, like wonderfulreads said, look into a regional association because it’s much easier to develop if you have people to compete against/model yourselves after as you would be a new chapter. Also, I’m assuming policy debate but some of the forensics-debate events like public forum or lincoln-douglas might be preferable for a smaller chapter with not as much of a research capacity, just a suggestion.
I was one of two moderators to start our team when my school opened in the late 80’s. I coached S & D (also known as “Forensics”) for 18 years. Here’s what I would do:
First and foremost, you're going to need a moderator. Don't kid yourself-- this is a GIGANTIC commitment for the adult(s) involved, and it's going to take huge amounts of time. Start talking it up with members of the English and Social Studies departments to see whether any would be interested. Without a moderator, this isn't going to happen.
Personally I would probably start with Speech. It's less of a time commitment, and you can get the kids who are already successful in drama to do the dramatic events: Drama, Oral Interpretation, Duo Interp.
As far as Debate goes, Lincoln Douglas is an easier starting point than Team Debate, since LD involves a different topic for each competition (as opposed to one year-long topic for team debate.) There’s less research involved and more of a concentration on argumentation than on evidence.
You don't need to have large team. In fact, you'll probably get further if you start small as you and your coach learn what you're doing. I was one of 5 or 6 kids on my high school team, yet I went to States and Nationals.
The links provided above are a good starting place.
After the break, speak to whoever is in charge of activities in your school. Find out the protocol for starting a new activity.
Good luck!! I loved the time I spend competing and coaching Speech & Debate, and really feel that it prepared me for my professional life more than most people would believe.
