Not many high school students would willingly give up a school year's worth of weekends to pile into vans and buses – on their way to discuss the complexities of the merits of teacher pay or the morality of compulsory immunization.

Yet at Ridge High School, 84 students proudly sacrifice their time – sometimes more than 20 hours a week – to call themselves members of the Ridge High School Forensics team.

Ridge has won the state championship in speech and debate every year since 2002, had three national champions since 2003 and earned many other major tournament and national awards since language arts teacher and Director of Forensics David Yastremski started the team 13 years ago.

Rarely is success achieved with such consistency, yet Ridge has been nothing short of a state powerhouse in speech and debate, earning national recognition and acclaim along the way.

"Our principal jokes around about [the time] he was at a Midwestern airport... wearing this Ridge High School shirt," Yastremski said. "People started pointing at him. They went up and asked him, 'Are you with the Ridge forensics team?'

"He said right then and there, 'I knew something was up when I'm getting pointed out in a Cincinnati airport."

How does a program go from a five person extracurricular activity to one of national significance? For Ridge, the story starts with some additional work in a college class.

"I did an extra credit for a college speech class," Yastremski said. "And then when I went to graduate school down in Kentucky, a local high school was looking for a part-time coach. It was there that I got into the whole world of [forensics]."

Yastremski started the program at Ridge after his first year teaching at the school. Four interpretive readers and one extemporaneous speaker made up the whole team.

Nearly a decade and a half later, nearly 40 students try out for the team each year, with 15 to 30 added to the squad.

As the team grew, so did their reputation and success. Nina Thanawala won the Lincoln-Douglas debate national championship in 2003, and Caleb Seeley (2005) and Sundeep Iyer (2007) brought back national championships in congressional debate.

Alumni have gone on to work at prestigious firms, research at top graduate programs and attend Ivy league schools (Iyer is currently at Harvard, and his brother Subash, also former debater, was the youngest appointee to President Obama's administration).

"They are doing everything from government to academics to finance to entertainment," Yastremski said. "That's [another] thing about this activity; it's not just for one type of person. You get the dramatics, you get the thinkers, you get the politicians, you get all types because there is always something there for them."

Yastremski says he attributes the team's success to two things: discipline and dedication. "[Students] are competing every single weekend. And because they are devoting so much time to it, the effort comes next. Why [would] I have to wake up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning during the school year if I am just going to go somewhere and not do well?"

Kevin Shia, Vice President of this year's Lincoln-Douglas team, said, "It's a lot of work ... but it is very educational because you learn about many different speaking styles, how to articulate your points clearly and [you learn] a lot more about the world in general."

Team president Alex Smyk, who was already tournament champion at Yale, George Mason and the New York Invitational this year in congressional debate, agreed with Shia.

"I think the biggest benefit is a comprehensive knowledge. You really have to have a vast store of knowledge about a variety of topics – not just a superficial understanding, but you have to be able to back up your points, talk on your feet [and] use evidence properly. You really have to have a profound understanding," Smyk said.

"[The value for the students is] critical thinking, the ability to express oneself and adapt oneself to any situation," Yastremski said. "A debater can walk into a round where they have a national level debate coach [as their judge]. They have to figure out, what do I have to say and how do I need to argue in order to persuade this judge ... Or they can walk in there and have a grandmother who has never judged a debate round before – what do I need to tell her?"

All evidence suggests that speech and debate coaches, as well as Grandma, have found Ridge uniquely capable of answering that question.

And while a green and white "Ridge" shirt might be recognizable far from the school on 268 S. Finley Ave, Yastremski still tells his students, "You can't rely on the name alone. Your skill is the thing that is going to stand out at the end of the round."