From October 13 to October 14, Irvington Debate collaborated with Washington Debate to hold the I-W Invitational, making it the first post-pandemic tournament Irvington has hosted. I-W was hosted at Washington High School and took place from 4:30PM to 9:00PM on Friday and from 7:00AM to 6:00PM on Saturday, and was hosted at Washington High School. The tournament had an impressive 49 teams from the National Parliamentary Debate League competing across the Novice and Varsity Parliamentary Debate divisions. 

Competitively, the tournament was also a success for Irvington Debate. Two Irvington teams, consisting of students Pranav Elaprolu (9), Jachin Thilak (9), Rahul Manicka Rajkumar (9), and Vivaan Dudani (9), closed out in the novice division, meaning that they were undefeated throughout the tournament and championed the tournament together. In the varsity division, Mihir Gadre (11) and Gurnoor Sandhu (11) were undefeated in preliminary rounds and competed through the Quarterfinals of the tournament.
Irvington competitors also went above and beyond in this tournament by sweeping the top 5 speaker awards in the Novice division. Rahul Rajkumar (9) placed third-place speaker overall and shared, “Our novice captain prepared us really well for the tournament because we were able to apply complex concepts like counterplans in rounds and our opponents had trouble responding to them.” 

Notably, this was Irvington Debate’s first collaboration with Washington and their first time hosting a tournament after COVID-19, which ensured months of preparation and hard work to go into the tournament.

“Irvington and Washington have been rivals for a while now, so it was nice to get to know the officers really well and collaborate with them. Hosting our first tournament since the pandemic was a perfect homecoming,” said Vice President Sahana Dasgupta (11).

Throughout the tournament, the team was able to respond adequately to all situations with the help of the Washington Debate officer team. “The Washington coach has lots of experience with running tournaments so he was really helpful by guiding us throughout the process,” said co-president Gautham Ramshankar (12). He notes that they wanted to have a joint tournament to increase the number of teams that would compete, as opposed to having two split tournaments.”

“It was difficult trying to run the tournament on schedule, but after lots of chaos-handling and coordination behind-the-scenes we were able to pull it off,” said Dasgupta (11). 

All obstacles aside, Irvington Debate succeeded in hosting their first tournament after years of the pandemic and online debate, setting a sweet precedent for the years to come. 

Ms. Ferrer, the Debate club advisor, expressed that the officer’s team “leadership and organizational skills and Debate’s new novice teams that closed out the tournament,” made the tournament one to remember. 

“Irvington did great in both divisions, and having our novice teams close out so early in the year is really promising,” said Ramshankar. “I-W showed us the potential of the future of Irvington Debate, and it didn’t disappoint.”

Irvington Debate expects to maintain their competitive achievements at the National Parliamentary Debate Invitational at UC Berkeley in the upcoming weeks.