Three Rankings Reactions, Plus TOC Speculation (Bob Overing)

Our final Premier Rankings came out this week after the final bid tournament of the regular season. You can see them and read about our ranking methodology here. In this lull before the season-ending championships, I want to take a moment to congratulate Premier alums, the best non-seniors, and the young women atop the standings. Then I’ll do a little fun speculation about how competitive this year’s TOC could be!

Premier Alums Shout Out

Our alums just finished a huge regular season, and I anticipate that success will continue through TOC this year. We had SIX debaters ranked in the Top 50: #16 Frances Zhuang from Palo Alto, #24 Alan George from Klein Oak, #29 Patrick Aimone from Servite, #41 Kevin Li from Stuyvesant, #45 Varun Paranjpe from Mountain View, and #50 Camille Caldera from Walt Whitman. Many others were ranked highly and earned bids, but they are too numerous to list here.

Our camp model has always emphasized practical application, drills, research, and practice debates, and I think it’s paid off through tangible improvements and reinforcing strong habits. In particular, our students from the Invitation-Only Week proved themselves to be elite, and in many cases, outperformed expectations. Congrats!

Non-Seniors to Watch

Based on our rankings, these are the Top 25 non-seniors at the end of the regular season:

1. Ishan Bhatt (St. Andrew’s Episcopal)
2. Lindsey Perlman (Byram Hills)
3. Ronak Ahuja (Chaminade)
4. Jake Davidson (Harvard-Westlake)
5. Ryan Younger (Brentwood)
6. Jaya Nayar (Harvard-Westlake)
7. Niko Battle (Kamiak)
8. Rex Evans (Santa Monica)
9. Anna Myers (Greenhill)
10. Spencer Paul (Harvard-Westlake)
11. Conal Thomas-McGinnis (Valley)
12. Alexandra Mork (Harvard-Westlake)
13. Jack Stern (North Hollywood)
14. Tiffany Chang (Phillips Academy)
15. Osmane Sanogo (Newark Science)
16. Saianurag Karavadi (Quarry Lane)
17. Viren Abhyankar (Northwood)
18. Animesh Joshi (Valley)
19. Vishan Chaudhary (Harvard-Westlake)
20. Varun Paranjpe (Mountain View)
21. Rohith Sudhakar (Westview)
22. Tajaih Robinson (Success Academy)
23. Andrew Garber (Cambridge)
24. Madeleine Conrad-Mogin (Immaculate Heart)
25. Martino Boni Beadle (Cambridge)

Congrats! Of note: (1) Harvard-Westlake is poised to have another huge year with five of the top twenty-five (only Valley and Cambridge have more than one); (2) fifteen of the twenty-five are from the West Coast, plus seven of the top ten, and eleven hail from the greater Los Angeles area; (3) argument diversity is strong – we have kritik debaters, util debaters, Kant debaters, and more!

The Four Women at the Top

I noted at the beginning of the season that this could be an awesome year for the young women on the LD circuit. I think I may have even underestimated how true that was. The Top 4 on our rankings and five of the Top 10? Wow! Those four won six of the ten octas bids this season and reached finals of five more. This is very special.

On this site, we have run our current “ADP” rankings for two seasons, ELO for one season, and the Coaches Poll for two seasons before that. Never have we seen anything like this. This is my tenth year involved with LD debate, and every ranking I can recall before this season has been clearly male-dominated at the top.

Much has been said about gender and sexism in LD debate in recent years, and none of this should be taken to mean that those issues are somehow resolved or that the discussion is over. We still need to see more women in LD, on teams, competing at the highest levels, judging, running tab rooms, teaching and directing at camps, etc. I don’t know if Hockaday still runs its Women’s Round Robin, but if not, I suspect the inaugural Quarry Lane Womxn’s Invitational & Round Robin next month will be an excellent replacement. Kudos to Quarry Lane!

Four Potential Champions (At Least)?!

Each of our Top 4 has won or reached finals of what I believe to be traditionally the toughest octas bids: Greenhill, Glenbrooks, and Harvard-Westlake. They make up five of those six finals finishes (despite two being eligible for only two of the three tournaments since their school was hosting). All four have an excellent shot at winning TOC at the end of next month.

Their records are almost impossible to differentiate. Greenhill SK is #1 on our rankings and has the most octas bid wins with three. But #2 Immaculate Heart DD won Greenhill and leads the rest in bid count by two or more, demonstrating consistency. #3 Newark Science BA won Glenbrooks, which I consider to be the toughest win, and has four finals appearances in octas bids (tied for first). #4 Harvard-Westlake IP ended on the highest note, winning Berkeley and defeating Greenhill SK in semis while Newark Science BA lost in doubles and Immaculate Heart DD lost in triples.

Add to the mix Success Academy SC, who entered the season as our #2 ranked debater (despite not going to TOC 2017!) and did not debate very much this year. His two tournament results are top speaker/top seed/quarterfinalist at Greenhill (losing only to Harvard-Westlake IP) and top speaker/top seed/co-champion at Harvard.

That leaves us with at least five legitimate contenders for TOC champion this year. So what? Well, in my estimation we haven’t had a list of legitimate contenders this long in many, many years. This is all pretty conjectural and subjective (though I’m very familiar with rankings from previous seasons), but I think in 2017, there were three favorites; in 2016, three; in 2015, four; in 2014, three; and in 2013, three. And in 2017 and 2016, the champions likely were not ‘favorites’ going in, but proved doubters and rankings wrong. So perhaps competition at the top is becoming increasingly fierce.

All this means that TOC 2018 could be the most competitive and most fun we’ve had in a long time. These five cannot rest on their laurels – they will need to develop new tactics and strategies – and the rest of the pool will do everything they can to knock them off.

I know the national circuit (myself included) puts a lot of stock in the TOC. Whatever happens, we should take a moment to congratulate these five on compiling awesome lists of accomplishments this season. Having coached three of those sixteen or so ‘favorites’ over the past five years, I can say that it is not an easy path. The tournament grind is taxing, time spent with family and friends diminishes in favor of drills and cards, and dedication to debate tends to grow until it is all-consuming, or we burn out. But for many of us, the fun of debate and the value of competition (and maybe something about education) make it all worthwhile. So: Hats off and good luck to these five, to the rest of the TOC pool, and to the graduating seniors of 2018!