[This is an article that I wrote for my school newspaper's end of the year issue about our debate team's success this year. Originally posted here.]
It was a rainy April Saturday in Darien, Connecticut. A chilly cafeteria was filled with debaters from high schools across the Constitution State, many of them sweaty palmed, with their dress shirts and ties partly undone after two long rounds of intense debating. Two teams of two debaters were announced over a raspy microphone as having made it to the final round. One was from Hamden High School, the other from Wilton High. This was the 2006 Connecticut Debate Association State Finals.
Hamden’s qualification for the final round came as a surprise to the Hamden High Debate Team as a whole. The chosen Hamden debaters, senior Carl Anderson and I, junior Khalid Nourediene Lumendifi, were taken aback at once. Though our first debate went well, we felt like our last round had gone afoul, with a judge that did not seem to care for the topic at hand (the Resolution was "Bloggers should be protected by journalistic privilege and shield laws in the United States"). He seemed to be watching the rain fall outside more than the debate. His brow was constantly furrowed, visibly irritated by every one of our arguments. Our opponents, from the arch-rival Amity Debate Team, began that second battle strong. Towards the end Carl hit Amity’s star debater, Brandon Vossberg, with a number of zingers, and I concluded on a firmly crystalized note. Nevertheless, it stuck us and our lone spectator, junior Erika Moody, as if it could have gone either way.
Our team had not planned to stay for the entire tournament. We had planned to go home after the finalists were announced and we had given them our congratulations. All of us were tired, and were prepared for an evening of relaxation. I wasn’t even convinced that most of the debaters on our team wanted to say. It was so cloudy that the halls of the venue were lit in significance only by hideous florescent lights. The size of the mammoth that was Darien High made many of us, in the words of a fellow debater, "feel poor." It was, in a word, depressing.
Despite this, I will never forget the look of jubilation that over took our coach, Mrs. Canalori, when we qualified. Junior Eric Kirchner leapt from his seat and raised his arms in their air, shouting uncontrollably in the euphoria of victory. Our captains, seniors Jeff Lipton and Peter Yakolev showed unusual emotion in the moment.
When we arrived in the massive dark Darien High School auditorium, I remember having flashbacks of glorious days last year when Charlie Nathanson and Scott Hochberg (both class of `05) regularly brought home huge trophies after humiliating debaters from other teams on their own turf. At that time last year, those were my heroes. No Hamden High School debater can deny the legend of Charlie Nathanson. If one does a Google search for "Hamden" "High" and "Debate", most results turn up pages bearing Nathanson’s name somewhere within them. Now my partner and I were standing in that exalted place. It was time to stop thinking and to start arguing.
I never looked the Others in the eye. I probably should have, but I didn’t. I had never seen these Wilton debaters before. Were they new? Were they graduating? Were they home schooled? Who were they? Usually one knows their opponent at least somewhat, it is surprisingly easy to become familiar with thirty-four varsity teams of two. It’s rather unsettling when one actually encounters an unfamiliar pairing. But like I said, it was time to stop thinking and to start debating.
The one thing they surely were not was mediocre. These girls knew how to debate. Their definitions were weak though, and as the Negative, it was our right to challenge and reject them. We did. Their contentions were strong. So were ours. We fought the tit-for-tat fight with them through our speeches. The main disaccord between our two cases was over just who was a journalist. Journalistic privilege should only be applied to those with extensive training in journalistic writing and a degree in that profession, went their line of thinking. On the contrary, we remarked, many of the greatest journalists ever had no professional training or had not even completed high school, such as the late and great Peter Jennings. I gave the concluding speech, drawing a couple sets of hearty applause from the crowd. After gathering our things off of the stage, Carl and I made the usual debate formalities, shaking hands with our opponents and taking our seats in the audience to await the results.
At the end of every debate trophies are awarded to the top 10 debaters from four categories, novice and varsity, which are each broken into team awards and individual speaker awards. This means that if you are in the top two or five of the varsity list for individual or team speakers, which Carl and I were, you’ve got quite a bit of waiting to do. The whole process took about ten or fifteen minutes, including the applause after each name was called. Carl and I were awarded 1st place team. We won the final debate, we slew the dragon. I won 1st place individual speaker. Hamden won.
On our way to the stage to receive our double pillared gold trophies, I heard cheering at a level unprecedented at any of the tournaments I had attended previously. From the seats on high where the "Pop you collar" Amity debaters sat, to the cheap seats where nameless South Asian Muslim debaters told me that finally one of "us" Muslims had gotten to the top, to the center seats where we and the Wilton team congratulated each other, respect for Hamden made itself known. As depressing as the clouds may have been and chilly as the air may have been, Hamden had yet to bring home a double pillar in a long time. It was a time of grandeur and a time of pride. Hamden’s pride.