Sage Hill to Host First World Schools Debate Tournament
Sage Hill to Host First World Schools Debate Tournament
Sage Hill School is hosting its first World Schools debate tournament on Friday, October 19 and Saturday, October 20. The tournament will include high school debate teams from across the country and as far away as Canada.
The Sage Hill community is invited to watch the competition, with the premier audience events held from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM October 19 (featuring Sage Hill debaters) and from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM October 20 in the McNeill Merz Loft (finalists round).
The World Schools debate format is relatively new in the United States. In May 2017, Sage Hill’s debate team decided to add this format into the mix.
“Early adoption of this format takes a lot of work, but it also provides a unique opportunity for our debate program to take leadership in this format by developing competent Worlds debaters within our team, and then helping to build out World Schools competency and support in the community overall,” said Trudy White-Matthews, Sage Debate advisor.
Since adopting the new format, Sage Hill’s team has won most of the World Schools tournaments its entered. Senior Luca White-Matthews made it onto the Southern California World Schools team that went to Nationals two years in a row, and the Sage Hill team placed in the top 20 teams in the country the last two years.
“We have attracted top training talent like Veenu and Swish Goswami [nationally and internationally winning debaters on and coaches of Team Canada] to train our team, and we are sharing this immense resource with our debate community overall,” Trudy White-Matthews said. “This made a tournament a necessary part of our offering this year - we needed to support the format in a very visible way.”
Support and enthusiasm for the upcoming tournament has come from the entire Sage Hill community -- facilities, technology, security, administration-- and has made this endeavour a wonderful and humbling experience, White-Matthews said.
“[The Sage Hill] debate leadership team has been instrumental in the planning of this tournament,” White-Matthews said. “They have been actively involved in every aspect of this event; this has been a key leadership and event planning opportunity for them and they are stepping up beautifully.”
For more information about the World Schools debate tournament, please contact Trudy White-Matthews at white-matthewst@sagehillschool.org.
Sage Hill School
Sage Hill School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the School. The School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship programs, and athletic and other School administered programs.