As Stratford Academy’s debate team competes at Harvard University this weekend for a national tournament, those unfamiliar with high school debate might assume that the competition resembles the movie “The Great Debaters,” whose climactic scenes were set at that famous institution.

Watching Stratford’s debaters in action, however, tells a completely different story.

While most people may picture debates to be moments of great rhetoric, full of dramatic pauses and inflections, high school debate is a bit like watching an overcaffeinated auctioneer.

Even Stratford debate team member Andrew Jones, who will be competing at Harvard this weekend alongside teammate Hemanth Sanjeev, admits it caught him by surprise when he first joined the team last year.

“I started laughing,” Jones, a sophomore, said when recalling the speed-speaking of one of the senior team members. “It sounds ridiculous. ... It took me six months before I could begin to grasp what was going on.”

But Jones and Sanjeev, a freshman, have more than grasped what is going on. Despite their youth, and often facing teams comprised of juniors and seniors, the Stratford team has competed in tournaments all across the country and have usually advanced in most of them. Stratford coach Abby Schirmer said the team should qualify for both official debate national championships at the end of the academic year.

“They’re quite young to be attending these debates,” she said. “But they are very bright kids. They’re too smart for their own good. They work very well together. They are getting a lot of recognition, because they are so advanced in debate at such a young age.”

Sanjeev and Jones will get to hone their skills at Harvard, which will host more than 130 teams from across the nation from Saturday through Monday.

Stratford has traditionally fared well in debate over the years. Schirmer, who was on Michigan State’s debate team, took over the Stratford program three years ago from longtime coach Bob Kelly.

The Stratford debate room is practically littered with trophies and plaques for the team’s success over the years, and more debate trophies line the school’s hallways.

Though a year younger than his teammate, Sanjeev had joined the middle school’s debate program, so he was familiar with the fast-paced style of debate.

“I saw (the high school level) as more of the high-tech version of debate,” said Sanjeev, who joined the high school team while he was in the eighth grade. “Middle school debate is more like laying a foundation.”

Sanjeev said it took him two or three weeks to be able to understand what the debaters were saying, but it took him six months of practicing speed-reading aloud for 30 minutes a day before he was able to speak at the level he needed to.

Debaters have to be able to speak quickly, because they are compressing a lot of information for their arguments in a limited time frame.

Four debaters -- two from each team -- take turns presenting arguments either for or against a certain position on a specific topic, which is decided upon at a national level before the academic year even begins. This year’s topic deals with whether the U.S. should remove its military bases in South Korea, Japan, Kuwait, Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan, Schirmer said.

Once the team knows whether it will be taking a positive or negative position, each team member has eight minutes to give a speech, three minutes to cross-examine the opposing team and five minutes for a rebuttal.

That means the debaters not only have to be able to pick out the salient points from an opposing team, but taking notes to help form their own arguments when it’s their turn.

“With the speed of the debates, a lot of the rhetoric and persuasive element is lost,” Jones said. “We have to discuss more issues, so it’s more educational. I love the presentation quality.”

Sanjeev and Jones said debaters have come up with their own short hand and terminology, and both of them have speaking exercises that allow them to maintain their competitive edge.

“The trick is to train your ear to understand what (other debaters) are saying,” Sanjeev said. “Now, we really don’t think about it. I got over (the speed) during the first couple of tournaments.”