ADL teams dominated the novice policy division of Gonzaga 2019. Winning 5 out of 6 rounds, both ADL teams were top seeds – #2 Sehwan Park & Mira Baba and #3 Micah Wang & Ray Wang; of these two teams, higher seed automatically advanced to the final round. Seed #8 Ryan Bu & Audrey Leu advanced to the quarter final round. In addition, three top #2, #7, and #11 speakers were all from ADL – Micah Wang, Mira Baba, and Ryan Bu, respectively!
Important record change: Much later, a mistake on one of the judges on Ray’s speaker points were discovered (evidence), moving up Micah & Ray’s seed to #1 rank, higher than Mira & Sehwan. Therefore, while records might not be changed on Gonzaga’s end, ADL has updated their records here as Micah/Ray second place and Sehwan/Mira semifinalists.
Congratulate to all ADL teams, not only those who broke, but even those who didn’t because you all won many good rounds. Taiwan was definitely floating up, not sinking low. Also, thank you dearly to our home, online, and onsite coaches Ryan, Brennan, David, Tyler, Brandon, and James who have given all to this success. Students when they win sometimes forget that there is a very strong and clear LINK between winning students to their excellent coaches. There is actually something extra in ADL, our secret recipe for winning often – the peer mentors like Kelly, McKenzie, and Micah. We are thankful and proud of what you have accomplished TOGETHER!
Quote from Coach Tyler: “I’m very proud of everyone for what we accomplished this weekend. It is impossible without our solidarity and work as a family. I was really proud how we rallied together as a team to win, I think everyone either went to scout rounds, explain flows, or helped prep out opponents’ arguments. We have a lot of success lately, but we should not take it for granted because it is truly not easy what we are accomplishing — we must fight as one unit together since we are coming from outside the country to compete which gives us an enormous structural disadvantage to our US peers. Yet we probably would have won the Gonzaga team sweepstakes if they had an overall team award for novice division. Everyone put their full passion and love into this event and it made me truly ecstatic to be a part of this family.”
Quote from Coach Ryan: “When we know how to be happy for each other, the rest falls away into insignificant details. For me, the best friends I have to this day are the ones I made in debate in high school and college. I really think the only comparable analogy is soldiers who fought wars together. There is something unique about the bond debate forms between us. The things we carry with us after debate is a sharpened mind and close friends. The wins and losses fade away into irrelevance. I think I speak for all the coaches when I say our goal is to have this exact same problem at the Middle School TOC…Let’s just try close out finals then!”
Complete Results from Gonzaga: https://www.tabroom.com/index/tourn/results/ranked_list.mhtml?event_id=87845&tourn_id=10640
