In the fall of 2015, the author conducted a national survey of over 1,000 former high school speech and debate competitors. As he told a colleague, he was drowning in data. It was a good problem to have, but he was not sure how to thoroughly examine the heart of data; how would he make meaning of their experiences? Then, he realized, the answer had been right there in front of him all those years: poetry. In this narrative collection of 276 high school speech and debate programs alumni, we learn emotional aspects of competition, frustrations, collaborations, and growth. If we were to remove these feelings, memories, experiences out of data, we would fail to connect with participants and their perceptions of speech and debate experiences. For researchers, the strongest moments are not when they delete authenticity out of results, but when they find humanity in data.