My Freshman year, I wanted to join a club after the Marching Band season had ended. So, I looked up the club directory, and one name stuck out to me: Ethics Bowl. Curious, I showed up. When I came, there were two girls there, Kathryn and Catherine, just Sophomores at that point. I was kind of intimidated by how they talked so quickly and didn’t understand much of what they were talking about. But, I came the next week, even though I didn’t understand what they were talking about then either. I slowly began to understand, though not fully, even as the competition came around. I remember just sort of sitting back, and saying a script before Catherine and Kathryn took the lead, bouncing off of each other’s points at a blazing speed. But, we won states. Then Regionals. And before I knew it, we were onto Nationals. We started to meet two or three times a week, sometimes late at night via zoom. And when Nationals came around, we went to North Carolina for the competition. The first day of the competition was somewhat of a blur, we won the first three matches but lost the fourth. After that fourth match we wondered: “Are we going to place in the top eight to move onto day 2?” We sat in suspense as the top eight were announced. We squeaked in. Eighth place. The competition was bracketed, so we didn’t really know what to expect, as it was single elimination. But we won the first match, then the second, and then it was down to two teams. And we did it. We won.
For the rest of the year, we did a lot of recruiting for the next year, and due to that we managed to expand our team to ten people. I had gotten the hang of things by then, and was appointed as leader of team 2 (the maximum team size was five). That year went fine, 2-2 on the first day, so we didn’t move onto the second. The other team placed in fourth for states.
Recruiting continued, and our team remained the same size as the previous year. When the competition rolled around, I was again appointed leader of team 2. I began to get a hang of the whole ‘leader’ role. Team 2 placed in the final four that year. I was then appointed official team captain later that year.
Being Captain was hard. I had to prepare for meetings, and outline things that the team needed to do. This year, we had a lot more new people than before, so we decided to split the captains between the two teams. During the past competition, the team I was on went 2-2, but our schedule was one of the hardest I had seen.
Catherine and Kathryn talking in circles lifted me up, and inspired me to try harder, and be better. When I was captain, I strove to lift people up too. I encouraged everyone to strive and do their best, even if it wasn’t a lot.
When I first walked into that room, I didn’t know that Ethics would become a passion of mine, or that it would teach me how to lead. All I knew was that I was having fun. I knew I wanted to continue going, one meeting at a time.
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