Many of the top debaters in the country competed at a national Lincoln-Douglas tournament hosted by Harvard-Westlake at the end of winter break, and middle school debaters competed on the upper school campus Jan. 10.

“The Harvard-Westlake (previously VBT) tournament is one of the biggest tournaments of each debate season, and it went very well this year,” Kevin Wesel ’17 said. “The tournament kicked off with the Debate.LA challenge and offered novice LD, varsity LD, and World Schools debate. I thought it was really fun to see the best debaters around the country debating in our classrooms.”

Pranav Reddy from Harker School in San Jose won the Lincoln-Douglas tournament, while Cameron Cohen ’16 was named third speaker and Nick Steele ’16 was named seventh speaker in the Debate.LA challenge.

In the novice division, Nick Platt ’19 was named top speaker, Indu Pandey ’18 was named third speaker and the winner of the tournament in the novice division. Warren Wang ’19 was named ninth speaker.

During the tournament, the U. S. Debate Team held training sessions at the upper school campus to prepare for the World Schools Debating Championship this summer in Singapore.

Debaters competed at the University of Puget Sound tournament this past weekend where Chasia Jeffries ’17 cleared to elimination rounds and reached the quarterfinals rounds.

Debaters also competed in the Alta High School Silver and Black Invitational, a regional debate tournament in Salt Lake City held Dec. 4-8 where Connor Engel ’17 placed second and earned his first bid to the Tournament of Champions in April.

Two other sophomores, Evan Engel ’17 and Jesse Nadel ’17 advanced to the elimination rounds.