2018 Columbia Invitational Finalist Interview
Note: if you have questions you’d like us to ask, you can submit them here, and we’ll ask them during the next set of tourney interviews!
Finalist Interview
In finals, Kevin Li (Stuyvesant KL) defeated Chakra Jonnalagadda (Cypress Woods CJ) to win the Columbia University Invitational. Premier Debate has an exclusive interview with Kevin!
Kevin Li (Stuyvesant KL), Champion
Question: You went 6-0 in prelims and marched through elims to win the tournament. How’d it feel? Did you think you’d do this well? How was the tournament?
Kevin Li: Overall, the tournament was fun. I didn’t really think about how well I was going to do– I usually find that I do best when I just focus on one round at a time. I was sick during the second half of the tournament, which was rough, but it was overall super chill and not too much pressure.
KL: I think I made an extra effort to adapt; for example, in round 3, I debated slowly against a lay debater to try and keep the round educational, and I just in general paid more attention to my judge’s paradigms.
Q: What’s your debate style, and how do you think that affects your in round performance as well as strategy?
KL: I honestly am not sure what my debate style is. I read a lot of critical-oriented affs and neg Ks, but I also go for a ton of (sometimes frivilous) 1n and 1ar theory. That kind of flexibility has been really helpful in being able to adapt to certain judges, and also playing to my opponents strengths or weaknesses. I like to think that I’m not particularly good at one area of debate, but good enough that I can take up a diverse set of strategies.
Q: Are there any positions at the tournament you found more creative or unique than most? Any that you think deserve special recognition, or maybe that you’d be interested in trying yourself?
KL: Will Musoff from Scarsdale wrote a new aff mid-tournament to break against me and hyped it up a lot, so I was excited about hitting that, but I never got to. Other than that, there was nothing that really stood out in particular.
Q: Are there any issues in debate you feel particularly passionate about or have a strong belief in that you’d like to discuss or comment on?
KL: Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of incidents of judges or coaches being excessively mean and aggressive during RFDs, whether it’s my team or other teams, and its kinda upsetting because those are some of the moments where debate truly feels hostile. It can be especially discouraging for younger teammates who aren’t really used to the debate environment. Stuy doesn’t have a team coach so we don’t always have adults to go to about debate things, which can be intimidating at times. I’m super thankful for supportive friends on the circuit, but I just think it’s important that we pay more attention to the fact that debating is really stressful and tiring for everyone, and it gets to us sometimes, but that emotional support can do a lot to make someone’s experience at a tournament more positive.
Q: I think that’s a fair observation that we all could pay more attention to. Before we close, any shout-outs?
KL: I knew if I ever got a chance to do one of these interviews this year the first person I wanna thank is Dino. I’m really grateful that he picked me up as a student this year, and he has been an amazing coach. Also would like to shout-out Pacy for being an awesome teammate, and to Claire for also being a teammate! Debate would also be significantly less fun without the rest of the energetic Stuy LDers, and the policy+PF team. Thank you Kathy, Zach, Sai, Martino (the lesser moral authority) and Andrew for being eggs. Thank you to Columbia for holding an awesome debate tournament. Lastly, I just wanna plug the STUY LD FB PAGE!! https://www.facebook.com/stuyld/https://www.facebook.com/stuyld/
Thanks so much to Kevin for sharing his perspective with the community! If you appreciate these interviews, please leave us some feedback (either in this survey or in the comments below).
