• The Hawkers are currently ranked in the top 1% of schools in the world.

• The Hawkers have been State Champions 22 times since Bozeman High advanced to the top level of competition in Montana in 1974, including in 6 of the last 9 State Championships.

• The Hawkers have never placed lower than third in their classification at a State Tournament.

• Since 1958, Hawkers have produced 124 individual State Champions, an average of nearly 2 state champions per year.

• A large majority of national qualifiers from the Montana East District (since 2020) have been from one high school: Bozeman High. Bozeman High also produced more national qualifiers between 1994 and 2019—before a split into two qualification districts—than any other school.

• In 2021 and 2022, the Hawkers placed 12th and 11th in the nation out of 3,500+ member schools at the National Speech and Debate Association High School National Tournament.  

• Since 1994, 60 individual students from Bozeman High School qualified for elimination rounds at nationals in debate and 37 students qualified in speech.

• Hawker coach Anne Sullivan was the first coach in the Northwest United States inducted into the National Forensics League Hall of Fame

• Current Hawker’s coach, Adam Thane, was named National District Chair of the Year by the National Speech and Debate Association in 2021.

Competitive success and service form the foundation for later successes and contributions to society.

• Graduating Hawkers in the last ten years have attended every Ivy, several top ranked public and private universities and liberal arts colleges in the US, US service academies, universities in England and Scotland, and have served in the US Armed Forces.

• Hawker alumni have 

  • served in Congress

  • served as US ambassador

  • served as a federal appellate chief judge

  • won National Emmys

  • produced news, television and film, 

  • acted in films and television, 

  • held C-suite titles in major tech and industry firms

  • served in the US Peace Corps

  • written books, television, and film scripts

  • led large non-profit organizations

  • been university faculty members and leaders

If we missed YOUR accomplishment, email us! We want to include it! We’re proud of you!

Success In Speech and Debate Increases the Chances of Acceptance to Top Tier Universities by 30% !

The next best : Student Body President and Captain of a Varsity Sport... but… only by 5% !

Here’s a very incomplete list of some schools Hawkers have attended. If you are an alum and we missed your school, email us! We want to include it! We’re proud of you!

The Ivy League  

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell

West Coast “Ivy’s”

Stanford, UC Berkley, USC (University of Southern California), 

Private “Ivy’s”

Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory

More Exceptional Schools 

M.I.T., Oxford, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, University of Chicago, Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, NYU, The Royal Academy of London, Westpoint, Middlebury, Macalester, Reed, Duke, Tufts, Tulane, King’s College London, Syracuse, University of Rochester, Fordham Law, Bates

Did you know James Dean did high school Speech & Debate? Yup. Class of 1949 | Fairmount High School, Indiana. Dean placed sixth in Dramatic Interpretation at the 1949 National Tournament.

He is not the only famous actor or person of notoriety.

• Brad Pitt was a Policy Debater. He attributes following his dream of becoming an actor to the confidence and skills he built doing debate.

• Tupac Shakur was a rapper, actor, and poet who was part of speech and debate. 

• Chadwick Boseman competed in speech and debate and won 8th Place in Original Oratory at the 1995 NSDA Tournament.

• John Lithgow, who’s wife is from Conrad, MT and has a cabin at Flathead Lake, was a member of the speech team at Princeton High School in New Jersey.

• Paul Rudd, Ant Man, was on his high school Speech and Debate team and placed 2nd in Humorous Interp at the 1986 NSDA tournament.

• Josh Gad, known for his roles in Frozen and The Book of Mormon, was the Original Oratory NSDA Champion in 1998. He credits the activity with laying the foundation for his career and communication skills.

• Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa in Frozen, competed in debate at Syosset High School in New York, where she won 1st Place in Dramatic Interpretation at her District National Forensics League tournament.

Also of note:

• Jordan Peele was the first Black screenwriter to win an Oscar. In 2018, he won Best Original Screenplay for writing and directing Get Out.

• Supreme Court justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor

• Media visionaries Tom Llamas and Stephen Colbert

• And many more. Check them out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Speech_and_Debate_Association_members