4/17-4/24: LD & PF Tournament Results and Adapting for NSDA Nationals
Lincoln Douglas Debate
Tournament Results
This weekend, LD debaters competed at the Tournament of Champions.
Congratulations to American Heritage Broward’s Spencer Swickle for winning the tournament. In finals, Spencer defeated Strake Jesuit’s Justin Wen on a 2-1 decision (White, Meza, Datel*). Additional congratulations to Harker’s Ansh Sheth for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Public Forum Debate
Tournament Results
This weekend, PF debaters competed in the Gold and Silver divisions of the Tournament of Champions.
Congratulations to Daniel Guo & Jason Zhao from Strake Jesuit College Prep for championing the Gold Division of the 2024 Tournament of Champions. In finals, they defeated Samantha Gerber & Dash Gilrain-Lennon from St. Luke’s on a 4-1 decision (Gustafson*, Appel, Bales, Butt, Vasquez). Additional congratulations to Delbarton’s Ezekiel Ehrenberg for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
Congratulations to Ishan Puri & Noor Mahmoud from Thomas S. Wootton for championing the Silver Division of the 2024 Tournament of Champions. In finals, they defeated Dev Arora & Jake Quan from Hunter on a 2-1 decision (Stockstill*, Di, Gabay). Additional congratulations to River Hill’s Roselyn Bi for being the top speaker.
Full pairings and results can be found here.
YouTube Announcement
We’re posting TOC rounds on our YouTube channel throughout the week—subscribe today!
VBI 2024 Staff Announcement
We are so excited to start announcing our instructors for VBI 2024! Every week, you’ll get a chance to learn more about the talented staff working at VBI this summer. This week’s staff feature is PF instructor Bailey Koh.
Bailey debated for four years at Southlake Carroll where he served as the Co-President of Speech and Debate. He has amassed a total of 9 bids to the Tournament of Champions in his career, qualifying three times and reaching the semifinals of Silver TOC his junior year. Additionally, he has attended NSDA Nationals twice, placing 6th as a sophomore and winning as a junior. Other notable achievements include, championing CSU, semifinaling UT, and getting speaker awards at TFA state, TOC, and Glenbrooks.
Adapting for NSDA Nationals
by Leon Huang
Before anything else, congratulations to everyone who attended the TOC this past weekend! For many, it’s the end of their season, and if this was the last tournament of your high school debate career, congratulations on a great career!
There’s only two major tournaments left in the season: the last chance qualifier (happening this coming weekend), and the NSDA National Tournament. The focus on this article will be these two tournaments.
Getting ready for national level tournaments is always tricky–judging pools are scattered, styles look different, and it feels like a guessing game. At NSDA, that’s especially true–qualifiers come from all corners of the country, making the pool extremely diverse.
As a result, adaptation is hard, and the paneled prelims style that the NSDA adopts for their tournament makes it even harder. Getting ready for this tournament is hard, so here are some general pieces of advice that I hope you all keep in mind!
Prepare to adapt to the “lowest common denominator.” On a panel with a technical judge and a parent judge, you should probably adapt to the parent judge. With paneled prelims, the chance that you get judges that prefer a traditional style are high and your prep should mirror this. This means you should prepare traditional cases/blocks and do speaking drills!
Get ready for the different styles you might encounter. If you have friends from different parts of the US who do debate, ask them about their experiences! The style of debate in California is different from that in Texas, so getting familiar with these differences enables you to plan out your prep accordingly.
Something that helped me out tremendously at the NSDA tournament was getting practice in front of speech coaches. At the end of the day, debate is a communication activity, so if you are able to have strong communication skills, that will be extremely helpful in front of any judge. If your school has a speech program, consider asking your peers/mentors for help!
Best of luck to everyone getting ready for the tournament, and hope this helped!
Leon Huang debated for Leland High School in San Jose, California. During his career, he placed 12th at the NSDA National Tournament and reached late elimination rounds at tournaments such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Stephen Stewart. He taught at both sessions of VBI this past summer.