Debaters Win Magnolia Sweepstakes

While most people associate March Madness with the NCAA Tournament, the Mississippi Speech and Debate community's version of this began this past weekend, with the Magnolia Forensic League District Debate Tournament at Oxford High School, qualifying students to attend the National Speech and Debate Association's National Tournament, to be held in June in Dallas. For this tournament, the Saints fielded entries in Lincoln-Douglas Debate (Khalil Jackson '19, Bain McHale '19, Clay Morris '19, and Alisa Hill '21), Policy Debate (Faraaz Yousuf '19/Anna Jaubert '21, Steve Jiang '20/Vinson Lu '20, and Vitor DaSilva '21/Forrest Hutchison '21), and Public Forum Debate (Bernard Booth '19/Trey Till '19). In addition to serving as a qualifier for nationals, the tournament gives a sweepstakes award to the team with the best overall performance, with points earned based on placings in the tournament. St. Andrew's had the good fortune to keep all of its entries "live" after the first two rounds of debate, though it was apparent very quickly that the tournament was going to be decided between St. Andrew's, Madison Central, and Starkville.

 

In true March Madness fashion, the sweepstakes award was to be decided on the basis of a final policy debate round between Jiang and Lu against a team from Petal High School, which also would determine who would join Yousuf and Jaubert in punching their ticket for Dallas. Winning the final round of the tournament allowed the juniors to claim the second qualifying slot in Policy Debate and allowed the Saints to claim the points for 1st and 2nd place in the event. This, in addition to the points earned by McHale (5th place Lincoln-Douglas) and the team of DaSilva and Hutchison (6th place Policy Debate), allowed St. Andrew's to edge out Starkville by a single point (18-17), with Madison Central in 3rd place at 13 points. This represents the fourth straight year that St. Andrew's has won the District Debate Sweepstakes and gives the Saints a narrow edge going into the speech qualifiers.

 

Faraaz, Anna, Steve, and Vinson now join Ishan Bhatt (auto-qualifying in Lincoln-Douglas on the basis of his national championship last year), along with Khalil Jackson, Bain McHale, and Christopher Wade who all earned their spots at the District Congress qualifier in February.  The national qualifying cycle now proceeds to Oak Grove High School next week where the District Speech Qualifier will take place and the Overall District Sweepstakes trophy will be decided. Congratulations to our national qualifiers and Go Saints!