This has been a pretty exceptional year for Lexington's debate team, and last weekend it was capped with winning a national championship in Lincoln Douglas (LD) debate!
The Tournament of Champions is the most elite competition in high school debate. Only 72 entries are permitted in Policy and 84 in LD. Students qualify throughout the year by performing well at some of the hardest tournaments in the nation. For many students, qualifying alone is the single biggest achievement of their high school debate career. This year †exington qualified one policy team (Alex Yared and Bennett Clifford, both Seniors) and four LD debaters (Noah Star (Senior), and Juniors Adam Hoffman, Jerry Chen and Paul Zhou).
Our policy team had an exceptional performance, going 6-1 in the preliminary debates and beating some of the best teams in the competition to get there. They bowed out in the first elimination round (think sweet 16) to a tough team from Chicago.
Noah Star also went 6-1 through preliminary rounds, was named 3rd best speaker overall, and beat opponents from exceptional schools in Chicago, Dallas, New York and California en route to winning the tournament.
It is the first time Lexington High School has won the Tournament of Champions in LD debate. Lexington now is the only school to have won all three debate divisions (Policy, LD and Public Forum) in the history of the tournament.
The win capped off an extraordinary season for the LHS debate team. We won our 36th state championship in a row, as well was winning multiple national invitationals including tournaments at the Greenhill School (TX), the Bronx High School of Science (NY), and the Harvard Round Robin.
