This weekend was the Tournament of Champions, the most prestigious high school debate tournament every year. It's very difficult to qualify for. You have to win two "bids" to get an invitation, each one of which requires getting to the late elimination rounds of a prominent national tournament, so there are nothing but very good teams in it. It's the real national championship of high school debate. And one school from Michigan, Birmingham Groves, placed two teams in the top 17 (one of them made the octofinals and lost there, the other lost a playoff round to get into the octofinals, finishing 17th).
That's pretty impressive, made more so by the fact that (I'm pretty sure), all four kids on those teams are juniors. I know their best debater is a junior this year and I'm pretty sure the rest are too. That means they should have tremendous senior seasons next year and be among the nation's elite teams again. Congratulations to Scott Warrow, John Lawson, Terry Fischer and the other coaches there for a great season. The final round was between Dallas Greenhill and Glenbrook South, a Chicago area school. Both are traditionally among the top debate teams in the nation every year.
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What Ed? Are you telling me that Liberty University doesn't fund a private high school somewhere that's ranked #1 in the nation in high school debate?
Now I know you're lying to us...
How about a debate-off between Birmingham Groves and Liberty U? Winner gets to claim thte title as God's Advocate for the year.
Just to make it more competitive, let's have Liberty provide the team whose combined ages are closest to those of the Birmingham Groves' team.
The Groves kids could no doubt beat the novice and JV teams from Liberty easily. And I'd be willing to lay at least a small wager that they'd be able to beat the top varsity team as well.
The word "octofinals" makes me imagine contestants wrestling cephalopods to make it to the next round.
I think I've been reading too much Pharyngula.