Cornell Debates at Novice Nationals 2023
Members of two Cornell teams traveled to the University of Rochester and achieved top results
The Cornell British Parliamentary team and the Spanish Debate team (who both compete in a parliamentary format) traveled to the University of Rochester this weekend to compete in Novice Nationals 2023, the biggest novice tournament in America. The tournament drew teams from all across the country to participate in a tournament celebrating the hard work of new university debaters.
The tournament was a massive success for the Cornell Speech and Debate, which took home many top awards. In the "rookie" category (which is comprised of debaters who are new to university debate this year and had no high school experience in debate), Cornell's Pedro Pontes-Garcia took the 1st Best Speaker award, and Bally Warren took 5th. Also in the rookie division, Cornell had three teams advance to elimination rounds: The team Leo Glasgow and Gabriel Levin and the team of Juan De Maqua and Rushika Prasad made it to the semifinals. And Ellie Kagan and Bally Warren won the whole rookie division!
In the novice division (for debaters who are new this year to university-level debate but had previous debate experience), Cornell also had outstanding results with Adrián Cardona-Young and Pedro Pontes-Garcia making it to the quarterfinal round.
Cornell also brought a number of judges to the tournament, with seven judges advancing to the elimination rounds (Eli Pallrand, Gaveal Fan, Meg Kandarpa, Ben Shaw, Abigel Manaye, Julia García Güell, and Ram Orfanel) and judging as far as the semifinal round. Abigel Manaye also took home a judging award, winning the top award for "Best Novice Judge"! After the tournament, the team bonded over Indian food and ice-cold winds while bringing home more trophies for the Big Red.