The Season Starts Up At Binghamton and Bard
September 25, 2019
This past weekend the URDU traveled to two debate tournaments – the Bard College Intervarsity for Worlds debate and the Binghamton University Phyllis Schatz Invitational for Policy debate. We had success at both tournaments and brought over twenty students for their first debate tournament ever. While separated geographically, our team performed like the Yellowjackets they are in both competitions.
The UR Debate Union at the Bard College Tournament
URDU brought two novice teams, a junior varsity team, and a varsity team to the Binghamton University tournament. Teams of brand new debaters Tara Matz and Jay Park, and Valentine Le and Vaarya Srivastava, were each able to win two hard-fought debates in a huge novice division with lots of competitive teams from down the eastern seaboard. Congrats to Tara for finishing sixteenth speaker out of eighty competitors, with Valentine, Vaarya, and Jay not far behind. These results in novice bode well for a robust year of debate success!
In the Junior Varsity division, Demetrius Sadler and Connor Desai debuted their own unique Affirmative case and ultimately finished with two wins in a very tight JV pool. Connor, a high school Lincoln-Douglas format debater, enthusiastically and voraciously threw himself into the JV shark tank despite the immensity of that challenge, and showed that he has the ability to advance himself in this new debate format. Demetrius looks ahead to the rest of the year with excitement for all of the new creative arguments he’ll be able to develop on the road to nationals.
Ali Abdulla (L) and Ben Morbeck (R) prepping for their debate.
At Binghamton the competitive highlight was the varsity team of Ben Morbeck and Ali Abdulla entering elimination rounds as the second seed in the tournament at five wins, two losses – and straight to semifinals! While they dropped that round to a rowdy U Pitt team, they finished as proud semifinalists and now look forward to a very competitive year. Ali and Ben also finished 4-4 at the highly competitive Georgia State University tournament the previous weekend, demonstrating their rising dominance for the season ahead. Unsurprisingly, Junior Ben Morbeck also finished as third best speaker in Binghamton out of twenty-six elite debaters.
Debate action at the Bard Debate where UR earned a number of awards.
In Annandale-On-Hudson, NY at Bard College the URDU had success across all divisions, culminating in debaters Natasha Abrol and Prinaya Choubey reaching the final round and thus finishing among the top four at a tournament of over sixty-five teams. Natasha also snagged the eighth top speaker award out of over one-hundred speakers, and Tharun Sathiyamoorthy and Meghana Kandarpa took home fourth and tenth novice speaker awards, respectively. Meg and Amanda Liang broke to Quarterfinals in Varsity, while Nyle Qavi Masoom and Ali Masoud Madadi made it to novice semifinals and two teams – Mahmoud Altarifi and Rohat K. Chari, along with Christa Rivera and Yiwen Yang – reached novice finals. We also had excellent student judges at the tournament, with Niki Linganur, Warish Orko, and Mindula Suriyabandara all being invited to judge in elimination rounds. We congratulate our BP debaters at all experience levels for such a dramatic showing at the season opener.
All in all this busy weekend brought some great experiences for URDU debaters. We look forward to a fantastic and exciting year of debate ahead!