City takes 3rd at Wake National Season Opener

This weekend, the Baltimore City College High School speech and debate team journeyed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to compete in the prestigious Wake Forest University Earlybird tournament, and posted the best results of any Maryland team in recent memory.  The Wake Forest tournament attracted 97 teams from around the country and as far away as California and Arizona, and marked the beginning of the 2009-2010 national high school debate season.

The senior policy debate team of William Stokes and Nicholas Vail finished third at the national tournament, winning seven of ten rounds, against some of the most highly-regarded teams in the nation.  Their loss in the semifinals to another nationally-ranked team (and eventual champion), Montgomery Bell Academy from Nashville, Tennessee, marks the highest finish of a Maryland debate team in national competition at least the last ten years.

As a result of their finish, the Baltimore City team earned the first "bid" for a Maryland team in ten years or more to the 2010 Tournament of Champions hosted by the University of Kentucky and better-known as the TOC.  The TOC, established in 1972, is an invitation-only tournament held each year on the first weekend in May, and generally considered the de facto national championship for high school debate.  Teams collect TOC bids based on their performance at national tournaments such as Wake Forest.

This impressive performance marks the beginning of what is likely to be a stellar senior season for Stokes and Vail, who last year claimed the Maryland state championship in Policy Debate. As their debate coach, Patrick Daniels said: "I am so proud of Nick and Will and the hard work that thy have put in for the last four years.  This achievement speaks to the strong tradition of debate at City College and the support of all who love debate in Baltimore."

Gareth Imparato, Lincoln-Douglas and BCC junior, also advanced in the tournament to the round of 16 at Wake Forest finishing 13th.  Debaters Kaine Cherry, Christopher Jackson, Ameena Ruffin, Corey Lacey, Elliot Troutner, and David Neustadt, and speakers Emma Koch and Emma Davis also attended and netted some solid early-season wins.