Debaters Excel at State Tournament

Lyna

Kamgang, Justin Wu

The debate team nished 10th out of 173 schools in the overall sweepstakes category at the Texas Forensic Association State Tournament in Houston on March 9-11.

Greenhill sent a record 42 debaters, competing as 11 teams, to the tournament.

Students compete in one of three debate formats: Policy, Lincoln-Douglas or World Schools. Senior Karrington Barnett participated in the Oral Interpretation speech event.

In last year’s state tournament, Upper School debaters won both the Policy and World Schools division with teams composed of seniors.

In this year’s tournament, two of the ve Greenhill World Schools teams reached the semi nals and two others reached the quarter nals.

e two teams that made the semi nals were Greenhill Gold and Greenhill Diamond. Members of the Gold team are seniors Carcyn Coleman, Sophia Mohammed, Ivy Stitt and sophomore Lily Alston. Diamond team members are juniors Angela Kamgang, Abeera Amer, Reyna Diamond and sophomore Sherry Zhang.

Several Greenhill students also won individual World Schools speaker awards, which are based on points accumulated over several rounds of competition. e students are: sophomore Varun Mukund, third; junior Natalie Stachowiak, fourth; junior Sophia Li, h; and junior Kaden Alibhai, seventh.

In the Policy division, all ve Upper School teams advanced to elimination rounds. e team of senior Madison Rojas and sophomore Gautam Chamarthy continued to the octo nals, the nal 16 teams.

In Lincoln Douglas debate, a one-on-one format in which 160 students were entered, junior Seth Lee made it to double-octo nals – comprising the nal 32 competitors –and junior Adam Kesselman made it to octo nals before losing to the ultimate tournament champion.

Kesselman, who has been a competitive debater since his sophomore year, says this year’s season was one of a kind.

“Last year, because of COVID, I was a bit burnt out and then [I] was having to juggle soccer and debate. I wasn’t really invested [in debate],” said Kesselman. “ en this year, I made the full switch to being fully engaged. So, I was able to make that jump and qualify for the tournament.”

With several nationally acclaimed teams participating, the Texas state tournament is considered an especially competitive one, said Associate Speech and Debate Coach Allie Chase.

“We take it just as seriously as any national tournaments that we compete in,” said Chase. “In no small part, because schools in the state of Texas are some of the best in the country at debate in all three of the divisions that we compete in.”

Greenhill Debate’s lack of competitors in individual speech events puts the team at a competitive disadvantage. It makes it especially di cult for the team to overtake larger schools in the overall sweepstakes category.

“Grand sweepstakes is a big deal,” said Director of Debate Aaron Timmons. “It’s a big deal because many of the other schools have students competing in a lot of individual events, which rack up points. We do not have that.”

Last year, Greenhill debate students won both the Policy and World Schools division. e winning teams comprised seniors, so the mantle passed to another wave of top Greenhill debaters this year.

“We have a [motto] of ‘we don’t really like to rebuild, we reload,’” said Timmons. “ e people that we have now are just as talented but are now in a position where the focus and attention can be on them.”

In the weeks prior to the tournament, competitors in each division prepared for speci c challenges.

For Lincoln-Douglas debaters who compete one-onone, that meant preparing for a new motion.

“Everyone’s going into the tournament blind,” freshman Aaron Kuang said in the days prior to the competition. “ is is the only tournament on this topic. We don’t have any practice and we don’t know what other teams are going to run because we didn’t debate this in previous tournaments.”

On the other hand, policy debaters, who compete in a partner debate in which they must create a plan, continued with the same motion they have had all year. For these students, preparation looked a little di erent.

“We’re trying to navigate not being stressed during the tournament, and trying to have fun, but still doing our best,” said freshman Dhiya Hemchand.

In World Schools, debaters prepped both prepared motions and impromptu motions which they would be debating at the tournament.

“ e second motions dropped, we started writing case and making prep schedules on when we need to complete [cases] by or complete rebuttal,” said Amer. “My team made a competition list, who we think is going to be the biggest competition and then we are prepping for that.”

Everybody on the team had varying goals heading into the tournament. “We want to win, but probably that’s not realistic for this year, at least,” said Hemchand before the tournament began. “But we still want to be able to get far and have good experiences and debates to learn from.”

In the a ermath of the tournament, the competitors and coaches have re ected on the experience.

Twenty-one freshmen and sophomores competed in this year’s state tournament, and many of those were competing in the event for the rst time.

“Our goal is to have all students excel at their own best personal level, and that is di erent for di erent students, because they have di erent levels of experience,” said Timmons.

Chamarthy says that the invaluable opportunities presented at the tournament are what drove many of the debaters to do their best.

“We needed to get as much out of it as we could, because this was one of our best opportunities to perform in front of so many good judges and people,” said Chamarthy.

Along with allowing them to compete against some of the best, the coaches say that the TFA State Tournament always brings people together and makes the program stronger.

We needed to get as much out of it as we could, because this was one of our best opportunities to perform in front of so many good judges and people.”

“ ere are 10 people who had not gone to that tournament before, did not know what to expect and came back hyped about debate and the way they’re going to approach it and moving forward,” said Timmons.

With only national level tournaments le , Amer says the state tournament has prepared her for future competition to come.

“Everybody’s beatable,” said Amer. “ ere’s nothing that you can’t prepare and beat somebody for.”