Stuyvesant Speech & Debate Team Competes at Yale Invitational

Note: Myles Vuong is an Opinions editor for The Spectator.

From September 20 to September 22, the Stuyvesant Speech & Debate (S&D) team competed in the Yale Invitational—a prestigious national high school tournament—in New Haven, Connecticut, primarily on the Yale campus.

Eleven different speech and debate categories competed, and Stuyvesant students performed well in each group. “We had the champion in Junior Varsity Public Forum Debate and semifinalists in Policy Debate along with many people [who advanced] to elimination rounds,” junior and Extemporaneous Captain Myles Vuong said.

Despite such success, several logistical issues arose during the tournament. Due to space constraints, the Parliamentary Debate team was double-flighted for the first time in six years. This means that for each round, there were two flights: an A flight and a B flight. Half of the debaters competed in the A flight, while the other half had to wait for the A flight to finish before competing in the B flight. As a result of this scheduling, rounds took twice as long. “​​I suspect the Yale Debate Association was not happy about being forced to run it in this way,” senior and Parliamentary Debate Captain Adrian Turkedjiev said. “It does give debaters more time between rounds, but we ended up leaving at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday.” 

Since the rounds took twice as long, the Yale Debate Association had to take action to prevent the tournament from running too long into the night. “For the final preliminary round, they only let those teams [who] had a chance of making it to elimination rounds debate, which meant that many of our debaters did not get to debate a fifth round,” Turkedjiev said. “It’s certainly always disappointing when teams don’t get a full day of debate.”

In addition to logistical challenges during the tournament, debaters struggled to balance the competition with their other personal commitments. “Overnight tournaments are always tiring considering how packed the competition schedule is [and] how much homework and other extracurricular responsibilities [there are] that still need to be completed,” said Vuong. “I feel like the workload that Stuyvesant sometimes [allows] leads to more stress during a compacted time [...] I remember translating for my Latin homework with a student from another New York school in between competition rounds.”

Nevertheless, the tournament was certainly a highlight for the team, not only for the rigorous competition but for the bonds made and meaningful moments shared. “While the debate itself was a great learning experience, the hotel room hangouts, the team dinners, and seeing our old captain—who helped us judge—were even more memorable,” senior and Congress Captain Daniel Prizant said. 

The tournament also provided a unique opportunity for the team to connect and show off their preparation. “I loved simply bonding with my teammates, whether it was rushing to get ice cream for the bus or practicing the day before in the hotel,” Vuong said. “I saw some sophomores who had genuinely worked hard to practice for their first overnight tournament finally compete and see their hard work pay off. They all had an amazing time, and [this] only points to how dedicated and close-knit the team was.”

Not only was this tournament an opportunity for teammates to have fun together, but it was also a chance to connect or reconnect with competitors they wouldn’t normally have the chance to see. “We had some teams from California fly in, and it was nice to see some faces we see more rarely in person, ” Turkedjiev said.

Attending this tournament was a particularly valuable and new experience due to its cancellation for the Speech team last year. “This tournament was extremely significant for our Speech team. Last year we were scheduled to go compete in person as usual until a storm hit the tri-state area, leaving the area around Stuy flooded,” Vuong said. “As such, [the tournament] was canceled on the day of; so, as my first experience attending the Yale tournament, it was unique.”

The S&D team is looking forward to future tournaments and preparing the new batch of freshmen for future competitions—and, of course, future wins. “As our teams just got their novices, we are excited to welcome a new generation of debaters and get them going to tournaments as soon as possible,” Turkedjiev said.