The National Speech & Debate Association announced that Team USA will advance to the final round and compete for the ultimate title at the World Schools Debating Championships hosted in Vietnam. After competing against more than 70 top teams from around the globe, Team USA will advance to the last round of this prestigious competition to compete against Team Canada. This marks the first time since 1994 that the U.S. will compete in this round, and is also the first-ever North American final.
The USA Debate team competing in this year’s competition are as follows:
Ollie Braden – Senior – Jackson-Reed High School – District of Columbia
Ambika Grover – Senior – Greenwich High School – Connecticut
Chelsea Hu – Junior – Phillips Academy – Massachusetts
Vinayak Menon – Senior – Lambert High School – Georgia
Sungjoo Yoon– Senior – Burbank Senior High School – California
Alex Lee (alternate) – Harvard-Westlake School – California
The team is coached by Cindi Timmons (co-head coach), Aaron Timmons (co-head coach), and team manager), and Aditya Dhar (assistant coach).
From an application process open to almost 140,000 student members of the National Speech & Debate Association, only 12 students are selected to join the 2022-2023 USA Debate team. From these, five are chosen to compete at the World Schools Debating Championships in addition to one alternate.
The World Schools Debating Championships is a global debate competition for high school debaters. The tournament combines prepared topics with impromptu topics, encouraging debaters to focus on specific issues rather than debate theory or procedural arguments. The 2023 tournament began July 20 and concludes July 27 with the final round between Team USA and Team Canada being held at 2:00 a.m. CT, followed by an awards ceremony where the champions will be crowned at 5:00 a.m. CT. Both the debate itself and the awards ceremony will be streamed live via the World Schools Debating Championships’ Facebook page, which can be found at the following link: https://bit.ly/3rCTxS9.
“The USA Debate team represents some of the best and brightest high school students this country has to offer,” said J. Scott Wunn, Executive Director of the National Speech & Debate Association. “I’m immensely proud of all of our team members chosen to represent the United States.”
Learn more about the USA Debate team by visiting our web page: www.speechanddebate.org/usa-debate.
