The debate team participated in a tournament at Cal State Long Beach last weekend, with Claire Conner ’23 and Chronicle Features Editor Joanna Im ’20 reaching the quarterfinal rounds.

Debate team reaches quarterfinal and octafinal rounds

Olivia Feldman ’22 and Allie Landecker ’21, reached the tournament’s octafinals.

“I think the biggest thing we’ll be doing to prepare for future tournaments will be debating each other to practice against arguments we’re uncomfortable with,” Feldman said. “We’ll also be continuing to research new arguments and going to tournaments for the rest of the year.”

The team, led by debate program head Mike Bietz and assistant coaches Jasmine Stidham and Scott Phillips, competed earlier this year in tournaments at the Greenhill School in Addison, Texas and at Loyola High School in Los Angeles.

Debaters win bids for TOC

At Loyola, Chronicle Broadcast Director Alexandra Mork ’20, semifinalist Andrew Gong ’21, quarter-finalists Im, Chronicle Digital Managing Editor Jessa Glassman ’20, Nathan Russell ’21 and octafinalist Matthew Paul ’21 received bids for the Tournament of Champions.

At the Greenhill tournament, finalist Samantha McLoughlin ’21, semifinalist Mork, quarter-finalist George Zhang ’21 and octafinalist Gong also received bids. Jaya Nayar ’20 and Ben Weinberg ’19 also competed in the policy division, where Nayer won a speaker award in the tournament’s round-robin format. McLoughlin and Mork brought home speaker awards from both the round robin and Lincoln-Douglas divisions.

“We really are a community who fully supports one another,” Feldman said. “And when one of us wins, we all win.”