Image from Divya Mohanty
On October 25th, WHS Debate Club held a debate tournament, here at Washington, in collaboration with Irvington’s debate club. There were 9 varsity teams from Washington who participated in the tournament and they did splendidly. 8 teams made it to the elimination round, 5 of them being from Washington, and Washington ultimately won the tournament. As a result, the points each team won were accumulated to the clubs’ overall points, which propelled them to 1st place in the National Parliamentary Debate School Rankings.
Divya Mohanty, the club’s resident, is thrilled by the results: “It was honestly an amazing accomplishment. Coming from my freshman and sophomore year, we only had maybe one to two really successful varsity teams and everyone else was tossed aside [and] told that they weren’t going to be able to reach these awesome goals like qualifying to Nationals.”
A significant contributing factor for WHS Speech and Debate’s huge success is the growth in dedicated club members. “When I was a freshman, there were one or two teams that were committed,” says Bhavya Mehta, the club’s research director. “But this year we have a lot more sophomores who want to stay. So now we actually feel like a good team because we have over 10 people at every tournament.” The club’s accomplishments are a testimony to the payoffs of hard work and dedication. Compared to other debate clubs, Washington is largely student driven, due to a lack of resources. Schools such as Nuevo or Mountain View Los Altos have four to six debate coaches, while Washington relies solely on their hardworking Club Officers and Mr. Raskin, the club advisor.
Being ranked top in the nation is an amazing accomplishment, but there still is a long way to go if WHS Debate Club wants to stay high in the rankings, which you can find by searching “NPDL Rankings 2024-2025.” Rankings close in March, after Nationals, so club officers have been finding ways to improve team performance. “One thing that we’re working on right now is our networking,” says Mohanty. “What we’re doing this year is joint practices with the Nueva school. They have tons of coaches that are willing to offer us resources as well. So we’re working on doing joint practices with them as well as encouraging our debaters to reach out to experienced judges, to learn where to improve.”
Staying high in the rankings is not the only thing Mr. Raskin wants students to think about. “They’re really hardworking and smart,” he says. “But that’s not the main thing that I’m proud of. Even if they go to some tournament and they don’t win it, or maybe they give you a losing record, I still think it’s an incredibly valuable activity. When I competed in speech and debate in high school, I got a couple of small trophies from that time, but nothing even close to what our kids have here. But to me, it was still one of the most important things that I did in high school. It’s the thing that I look back on most fondly because it taught me how to be confident. It’s also where I made a lot of my friends, who I still talk to almost 20 years later . We still bond over the ideas that we learned from that club. And that to me is a lot more important than places like first or second.”
Eunice Yang is a senior at Washington High School and grew up in Fremont. She may be new to journalism but is interested in writing articles highlighting Fremont's diverse community in the features section of The Hatchet. In her free time, Eunice crochets and knits while watching her favorite T.V. show Brooklyn 99. She even enjoys baking muffins and cookies for her family and friends. When it comes to future plans, Eunice wants to be a nurse to continue making her community a better place.