Given the family history, extreme oratory skills are needed to win an argument against the Montees.
It starts with parents James and Susan Montee, who met in college while competing in debate. She, of course, went on to become state auditor, and he operates a successful law practice. And it’s carried on with their children.
Amanda, Andy and Austin followed the debate tradition and have excelled in what some might consider an unlikely venue — a community college.
“It felt a little weird,” said Andy of when he first enrolled at Kansas City Kansas Community College, “but the community college is really good for debate.”
The community college’s debate program was envisioned by Andy’s godmother, who was an administrator at the college. The school has since turned out debate teams that regularly thrash teams at four-year universities from across the country.
Amanda was the first of the Montee clan to attend the college, and she helped the school win a national debate championship in 2006. Her brother, Andy, joined the following year and brought another championship home. Austin, the youngest, joined his brother (Amanda has since moved on to the University of Kansas) and assisted in yet another championship for the team.
“It’s just like a fast-paced intellectual game, really,” Andy said, offering that he expends more energy in researching for debate than for any of his other classes. “You throw arguments back and forth like you would run plays in football.”
Among the six different event competitions that Andy helped win for his school was one at the Cross-Examination Debate Association in Wichita, where he and a teammate advanced through a 64-team elimination round that brought the community college a national title.
Andy closed out his career at the community college this spring and was offered a debate scholarship to the University of Texas—San Antonio, which he accepted.
“My plan was to go there (KCKCC) so I could get recruited to a bigger school and debate,” Andy said. “And that kind of worked out perfectly.”
Jimmy Myers can be reached at jimmymyers@npgco.com.
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