Greenhill Debate Team Wins National Championship

The Greenhill Debate Team traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, over the weekend to compete in the National Tournament of Champions. This tournament was attended by 308 schools from 36 states as well as teams from the Dominican Republic, Taiwan, and Kenya.

 

The team of Kaden Alibhai ’24, Emily Hu ’24, Sophia Li ’24, and Sherry Zhang ’25 won a National Championship in World Schools Debate besting an excellent team from Harvard Westlake in the final round. Zhang was the fourth individual speaker and Hu was the 11th individual speaker. In the finals, the team debated the motion, “This house would ban users from selling their data to companies in exchange for financial returns (i.e., receiving fixed monthly rates, dividends, etc., for the use of their data by companies).”

 

In Policy Debate, the team of Gautam Chamarthy ’25 and Rory Liu ’26 reached the octofinals (top sixteen in the country). Chamarthy was awarded the 10th-place individual speaker award. Liu was awarded the 21st individual speaker award. Dhiya Hemchand ’26 and Neha Bachu ’25 qualified for the tournament and competed well. The students constructed arguments around the topic, “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.” Teams must prepare for, and debate, both sides of the topic in competition.

 

Adam Kesselman ’24 and Seth Lee ’24 reached the octofinals in Lincoln Douglas Debate. Sarah Koshy ’26 reached the double octofinals (top 32.)  Lee was awarded the fifth-place, individual speaker award, and Kesselman and Koshy respectively were the 11th and 15th best individual speakers in the tournament. These students debated the topic, “Resolved: The United States ought to substantially reduce its military presence in the West Asia-North Africa region.” Aaron Kuang ’26 qualified for the tournament as well.

 

As a testament to the team's overall success, Greenhill School won the runner-up of the William Tate Award for overall excellence of the 308 schools in attendance.

 

Congratulations to all the students who competed!