Seven debate students in the novice division won speaker awards at the Woodward Novice Nationals debate tournament, which took place in Atlanta on March 20-22. Liz Yount ’17 won the first speaker award, Evan Engel ’17 won second, Indu Pandey ’18 won fourth, Matthew Gross ’19 won seventh, Nick Platt ’19 won eight, Ethan Rosen ’19 won 10th and Lauren Morganbesser ’19 won 12th.

Engel, Yount, Pandey, and Vishan Chaudhary ’19 shared a four-way win.

“We’re happy that we all did so well,” Engel said. “We’re really proud of the 8th and 9th graders who did really well along with us.”

The subject of the tournament was: just governments ought to force employers to pay a living wage.

The Tournament of Champions (TOC) is the next major competition for the varsity debate team. The TOC, which is exclusively for varsity debaters, requires a debater to have bids in at least two other standard offical circuit tournaments.

Currently Cameron Cohen ’16 and Nick Steele ’16 have five bids each and Connor Engel ’17 has one.