Cypress Bay Tradition (Saturday, October 7)
In Varsity Public Forum, we had two sophomore-sophomore duos get their first taste of national circuit success. The team of Grant Cooper and Drew Peterson received their first silver bid to the Tournament of Champions, reaching the octafinals and being narrowly eliminated on a 2-1 decision in a pool of over 90 talented teams. The team of Tyler Katz and John Ivarone also performed extremely well, completing their run as double-octafinalists. These 4 debaters are putting in work behind the scenes and are talented beyond their age - we are looking forward to seeing them take the circuit by storm.
In Varsity Policy, the freshman-freshman combo of Tyler Brown and Akash Deo attended their first bid tournament and completed their run as 3rd seed and Quarterfinalists on a 2-1 decision. They displayed a level of argument flexibility and strategic vision that is rare for their age - we have no doubt that they will make a strong showing nationally in the years that come.
In Novice Policy, we had students in their first month of competition compete against students from across the state. Two North Broward teams dominated the competition with 4-0 records and were declared co-champions after closing out a final round - congratulations to the 9th grade duo of Abigail Goodman and Vladimir McMahan, and the sibling team of 9th grader Jay Gopal and 7th grader Dev Gopal! Additionally, several 9th grade students were ranked in the top 10 speakers out of 34 students - Karissa Nikolopoulos was 5th speaker, Abigail Goodman was 8th speaker, and Cassandra Ameen was 10th speaker. We look forward to seeing everyone's performance at future tournaments!
Afterschool Tournament 1 (Wednesday, October 11)
Twenty-three novice students competed in policy debate, public forum debate, and student congress. Every single student in the debate events won at least 1 of their 2 debates, which is very exciting! For many students, this was their very first debate tournament! Everyone learned a lot from their experience. Special congratulations to the policy debate team of Jay Gopal and Vladimir McMahan, who won 1st place in the novice policy division after maintaining an undefeated record!