One Boise State team is in the midst of a two-year undefeated streak and has earned national attention for its victories, and it’s not football. It’s the Talkin’ Broncos, Boise State’s speech and debate team with almost 80 years of competitive history.
Manda Hicks — who is an interim associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, professor of communication, and Director of Boise State Speech and Debate — has coached the team since 2011. She is aided by Associate Professor and the Assistant Director of Speech and Debate Amy Arellano, also from the Department of Communication. During Hicks’ tenure, student debaters have seen a rare level of competitive success.
The Talkin’ Broncos won five consecutive biennial national championships from 2011 to 2019, earning national headlines in the Wall Street Journal and NBC Nightly News. Their most recent (and most unprecedented) achievement is an unbroken string of victories over two conference seasons starting in 2024.
“The undefeated seasons — that’s a big deal because that’s hard,” Hicks said. “It’s not necessarily a healthy goal from a coaching perspective, but when it happens it’s special.”
The secret ingredient to the Talkin’ Broncos’ success is a strong debate culture here in Idaho. Graduated Talkin’ Broncos go on to coach speech and debate at regional high schools. They bring their competitive experience to high school teams and inspire their students to continue the activity in college.
Junior and biology major Ivan Markevych is one such student. While a senior at Rocky Mountain High School in Meridian, Idaho, Markevych was convinced to join the speech and debate team by the school’s coach, a former Talkin’ Broncos captain.
After graduating high school and enrolling at Boise State, joining the Talkin’ Broncos was a no-brainer. “I was like, ‘why not?’” Markevych said. Since then he has flourished in interpretive events for prose and drama, achieving four first-place finishes and going deep in multiple regional and national tournaments.
“I absolutely love it,” Markevych said. “The character, the theater, all of that. Bringing through the emotions. That’s my thing.”
Student competitors like Markevych work hard to deliver the team’s exceptional record. “For those two credits that I’m enrolled in, it feels like a full-time job,” he said. But that hard work pays off beyond the debate stage.
“If you can do this for four years, you can do anything — and you’re going to do it well,” Hicks said. “It gives people the life they worked for.”
Talkin’ Broncos alum and 2013 commencement speaker Joshua Watkins (Communication, Political Science, ‘13) can attest to that. As public relations lead at Latham and Watkins, a premier global law firm, he traces his success back to his time as a Talkin’ Bronco.
“Speech and debate gave me an element of uniqueness for my [graduate school] application,” Watkins said, recalling the journey that led him to the London School of Economics. There he was one of only five students in his class with a public university background. “I also think it gave me the confidence to hold my own and not be intimidated by all these people who had come from Harvard and Yale.”
The Talkin’ Broncos legacy runs deep. One of Watkins’ professors at the London School of Economics, teaching government, was a speech and debate alum from the 1980s.
Alumni remember their time on the team fondly and regularly return to help current competitors prepare for events. Since graduating from Boise State, Watkins has helped with judging, coaching and debate prep as his busy schedule allows.
“It’s really this ecosystem of support,” he said. “There are alumni who were only on the team for a year, but are still, a decade later, giving their time and helping out where they can.”
The Talkin’ Broncos will head to the national tournament Pi Kappa Delta hosted by Missouri State University in March. The team has the capabilities and determination to continue their undefeated streak, but that’s not their raison d’être. This is an organization that has a profound effect on its members — academically, professionally and personally. Win or lose, that legacy will stick with the students forever.
The Talkin’ Broncos are supported in part through the generosity of the Jeker Family Trust.