The empty Mountain Dew and Squirt bottles that had accumulated over the last few weeks poured out of a Hefty trash bag and fueled the energy pumping through the students' veins to stay up late researching.
Despite signs urging members "don't be a slob," scattering the walls of Room 10 in Linton Hall, the space was cluttered with old research notes and articles.
But it was more than caffeine that brought home four trophies for the MSU Debate Team.
"Most people have no idea what we do," Aaron Hardy, an interdisciplinary humanities junior said. "There's times I've been here more than a hundred hours a week. You just say, 'you know, I'm just not going to do school work this week.'"
Hardy, along with the other 15 members of the debate team, have won high honors in four tournaments since December. The most recent was at Dartmouth College on Jan 24 and 25, which is one of the most prestigious matches in the nation. Only the top nine two-person teams in the country were invited. The team of Greta Stahl and Dave Strauss, both international relations juniors, took third place.
"It was exciting to win third because we put a lot of work into it," Stahl said.
The two-day tournament was stressful, Stahl said, because the teams don't know how they're doing until the end of the tourney.
"Everyone gets quiet and nervous because they want to hear their name," she said. "You have a gut feeling how you did, but you don't want to say it out loud because you don't want to jinx yourself."
Stahl said she put about 40 hours into preparing for that debate alone.
"Some of these kids are really amazing," said Will Repko, a debate coach. "I don't think anyone in this university has a grasp for how long these kids spend on this."
Repko said the group sometimes stays for hours to do more work.
"It's sort of not how it's depicted on TV," Repko said. "We have to do a lot of research."
Debaters argue one topic the entire year, develop more arguments and cite more articles to prepare for competition.
"It kind of never stops until the end of the year," said Mike Eber, interim debate director. "It's amazing how you can do so much but there's always more. It's a weird process, but when you go to a tournament, you have to be prepared for anything. We basically have to prepare for every single thing."
And preparing means toting as many as six Rubbermaid tubs full of evidence to cite each time they go to a tournament.
"They're really heavy," Amber Watkins said, laughing. "They've fallen on me before."
The psychology junior, who was able to maintain a part-time job and also be a strong player on the team, says time management is everything.
"It's possible," she said. "I think about the time I'm doing nothing, when I could be working."
Even with the hard work and time-consuming schedule, Hardy said he will be debating in some form or another for a long time.
"It's a hard thing not to do forever," he said. "You can't get away from it."
