From Sept. 13-15, Greenhill Debate students kicked off the 2024-2025 school year with their first debate tournament, the Grapevine Classic. 

41 Greenhill students, along with several coaches and faculty, attended this tournament which took place at Grapevine High School and Cross Timbers Middle School.  

Three junior varsity Lincoln Douglas debaters made it to the semi-finals and closed out the tournament, which meant Greenhill had all remaining debaters in that elimination round.   

In the junior varsity Lincoln Douglas division, sophomore Vivek Thankavel and sophomore Ali Naseem closed out the final round of the division. Freshman Eric Xing was awarded third best speaker. Speaker awards are given to individuals with high speaker points, which come from how judges rank their speaking ability.  

In the World Schools division, a team comprised of seniors Sherry Zhang, Varun Mukund, Saida Bidiwala, Aditi Vikram and Jonaki Bose won first place against a Hockaday School team. Zhang was awarded second best speaker. 

In the varsity Lincoln Douglas division, junior Sarah Koshy was the top speaker, receving first place individually. Junior Aaron Kuang and senior Pranav Sreenivas advanced to the triple octo finals, which are the rounds of eliminations preceding the quarterfinal round. Koshy and junior Michael Ahn advanced to the double octo finals. 

Lastly, in the varsity Policy division, senior Neha Bachu and junior Dhiya Hemchand reached the octo finals. 

Director of Debate Aaron Timmons says that the students are off to a great start for the first tournament of the school year. 

“I think we have an amazingly talented group of students across the different divisions that we do,” Timmons said. “I think everybody performed really well for the first tournament, and what is exciting is that experienced students are performing well, but there are younger students that are doing very well as well.” 

Both sophomore Sidrah Tarpeh and Sreenivas say they are content with the results. Tarpeh won three rounds and lost three rounds.  

“I am satisfied with my three-three,” Tarpeh said. “It makes me excited to go debate again because I realized that I [could] do it.”  

 Debaters prepared for the tournament by doing speaking drills, debating against each other and completing extensive research.  

On another note, Sreenivas says the tournament days can be extensive and tiring. Some days, like the day of the tournament in Grapevine, they started as early as 7:15 a.m. and ended as late as 11:30 p.m. 

“It is just a large time commitment,” Sreenivas said. “It is all of Saturday basically, a lot of Sunday and you miss a [class] period on Friday. It is just draining on your voice and on your body a lot of times because sometimes you forget to eat and drink water, and you just do not really take care of yourself because you are so caught up in prepping for the tournament.” 

Some participants say that debate tournaments are demanding due to their long hours and constant preparation. However, for many, the shared challenges help create a sense of community among teammates and competitors that makes the hard work pay off in the end. 

“Debate is hard, but going to tournaments is really fun because we all share the same struggle, it is hard together,” Tarpeh said.