Nov 07, 2023 At 02:35 PM EDT
When sophomores Sitara Mazumdar and Daniella Choi walked into the Georgetown Day School Invitational at the end of September, their expectations were low.
The BASIS D.C. students were each supposed to debate with different partners but ended up competing as a team together for the first time at the first national circuit regional tournament of the season. Not even they anticipated walking out of the tournament as co-champions with a coveted bid for the Tournament of Champions (TOC).
Choi and Mazumdar are part of the Washington Urban Debate League (WUDL) and debate in local tournaments within the league. They also travel to regional tournaments where they face different competition from top debate schools on the national circuit.
Mazumdar had attended the invitational the previous year as a freshman where she and her partner didn't even break—meaning they did not advance to the elimination rounds.
As the first regional tournament of this season, she said she felt less prepared than she normally does before a competition.
"This year, I hadn't gone to any camps because I was in India over the summer, and I hadn't done like [any] prep whatsoever," she said, fully expecting to finish with a similar record as the previous year. "I was like, 'This is just gonna be my learning experience, I'm gonna learn everything about this year's topic, and I'm gonna get really good and do well at the season opener.' I called it my 'crash and burn tournament.'"
Choi had similar expectations. After attending both the Georgetown University debate camp and the WUDL camp over the summer, she created an affirmative case that she wanted to test out at the invitational.
"I wanted to see what would pop up against this [affirmative] and just sort of see what people would be saying in order to figure out what to prep for next time," she said. "And that case ended up being ridiculously good. And we scored a lot of wins with it."
In the end, the BASIS team exceeded their own expectations. The pair went 4-2 in the preliminary rounds and moved into the elimination rounds where they defeated teams from Washington, D.C., including the talented home team Georgetown Day, to advance to the finals. BASIS D.C. was named co-champions with another team because the latter team needed to return to its home state, New York. Mazumdar also finished as the tenth top speaker of the competition.
Not only did they beat several top private schools, but the pair also scored WUDL's first bid to the Tournament of Champions (TOC), what Mazumdar calls "one of the biggest high school debate competitions in the country."
"[WUDL] has never gotten a TOC bid," she said. "And the teams who usually get bids for this tournament are usually private school teams with their own coaches and a lot of resources."
The Tournament of Champions is one of the most prestigious debate competitions in the country. It has been held each year since 1972 at the University of Kentucky and is considered the national championship for high school teams that compete on the national circuit.
To qualify, teams need to acquire bids, which they earn by placing high enough in certain regional or national qualifier tournaments. A team needs to earn two bids to compete at the TOC. Debaters can also automatically qualify by placing well in the previous year's TOC or two other national tournaments.
A few WUDL teams have gotten to TOC bid rounds but have never won the coveted achievement or attended the competition.
"It's such a historic tournament," BASIS D.C. coach Messai Yigletu said. "It existed long before WUDL or a lot of Urban Debate leagues."
He said it's "extremely impressive" to even get to a bid round, let alone receive an actual bid to the tournament.
The pair is used to debating at the local level in WUDL tournaments, which they describe as familiar and comforting.
"I kind of know everyone in the varsity circuit now and it's just really nice," Mazumdar, who won the Urban Debate Middle School National Championship in 2022, said. "I'm just like, 'Oh my god, I know you, we were texting the other day and now we have to go against you.' And it's a real sense of community in the local tournaments."
To them, regional competitions had always seemed scary and intimidating because they are traveling to a new city to face people they've never debated against over several days.
Both students said that local tournaments were typically where they wanted to thrive whereas regional competitions were a place to try new arguments, fail, learn and grow. That sentiment has now reversed as they are determined to continue winning in the national circuit.
Choi added that regional tournaments offer a challenge and opportunity to have higher-level technical debates that she doesn't find at local competitions. She was competing as a novice last year and after a summer of hard work, has secured her place as a top debater on the varsity level.
Going into the season, both Mazumdar and Choi set challenging but attainable goals for themselves.
"In the beginning, my goal was to get to high school nationals [at the] Urban Debate National Championship because I've been to the middle school nationals," Mazumdar said.
While that is still a goal of hers, Mazumdar now has her sights set on qualifying for the TOC.
For Choi, winning a regional tournament was the target. Now that she has checked that off her list, she is focused on getting a perfect 30 on speaker points and trying out new arguments.
Choi said she got into debate as a seventh grader to feed her competitive spirit and stayed for the intellectual challenge and ability to think critically.
"I like a lot of strategic games and activities that [are] sort of problem-solving," she said. "Debate [has] very clear benchmarks for what you can do to improve and what you're supposed to get done, which helps make stuff seem a lot easier to accomplish, but then you still get to feel like you're being productive."
At the start of this season, Yigletu was also hoping to bring a team to NAUDL nationals.
"I don't think either of them thought they would be reaching such a high level of debate, especially this early in their career," he said. "It's crazy to think we're still in the middle of this season."
Yigletu said Mazumdar and Choi are already leaders on the varsity team at BASIS D.C. The debaters were part of the original group that restarted the debater program once Yigletu started teaching at the school.
As a young Urban Debate team, Mazumdar and Choi will likely face older, more experienced and better resourced teams on their journey to the TOC. Earlier in their debate career, this was intimidating for the BASIS team. But with success comes improved confidence.
"No matter how young I am, I've learned to use it to my advantage because going against seniors [in high school], they don't expect much from you," Mazumdar said.
Mazumdar and Choi will have the chance to secure a position at the TOC later this week at the Urban Debate Dragon Invitational. The tournament, hosted by WUDL in Washington, D.C., will bring together NAUDL and non-NAUDL teams from the D.C. area, New York, Boston and Texas.
