"We are Winning on The Case Flow", Reflections on My First Year of Policy Debate

It's been just over a year since I first received an email from Jackie about joining the debate team. I was a senior at TJ, working on a calculus project with my friends, and I had no idea where it would take me. I had never debated before, never did speech or public speaking other than doing a TEDEd talk in my freshman year of high school. I had no idea what was a kritik (with a K), what a counterplan was, or what a framework was. I had no idea how to read a card, how to prep against a K aff, or how to prepare for a tournament. This was all new to me, and something that I thought that I would never be good at given the amount of work and knowledge that I would have to acquire to be competitive. I signed up for the interest meeting and the rest is history.

It was defenitely a very tough year overall with a lot of ups and downs. I had a partner who quit a week prior to the GMU tournament, which lead me to get partnered with who I like to called "Born Ready Sanchez" (BRS), in reference from this post. From there, we went on.

Second Semester Run-through

As a duo, we had a few successful runs in many tournaments which included our run at West Point, which was the first tournament we traveled to (not GMU) and landing in a semifinal finish after a very difficult prelim run going 3-3. Wake Forest was a mixed bag, despite going 2-4 at the tournament we managed to be in the top 15 speaker positions in the tournament. At Navy, we went 0-3 in the first three rounds, but despite that we managed to come back from behind and go 4-3 by round 7. We ended prelims with a 4-4 record and snuck our way into the quarterfinals where we lost to NYU on a 2-1 decision. We parted ways for the next two tournaments where I debated with another partner (now as the 2A) and went to a semifinal finish in the JV/Novice Nationals tournament at Fairmont State in West Virginia, but unlucky for us we didn't break at the ADA Nationals tournament, where we won every aff round and loss every neg round and barely didn't break. I reunited with my old partner, BRS, for CEDA where we contested against some great varsity and JV debaters and ended that tournament in a 2-6 record to cap the season off.

Personal thoughts

Despite winning Novice Debater of the year, I never considered myself to be 'one of' the best novice debater on the team. If you were to ask someone from another school which debater from GMU they are the most afraid of, they'll most likely pick the other novices, and for good reasons too. All the other novices have great records, we have one team that went unbeaten in the second semester and at least reaching semis at each tournament (winning 3 tournaments) and getting a 4-4 record at CEDA. We have a team that became K debaters mid-season and proved that they can do it at the highest level by winning JV/Novice Nationals. We have a team that always clears at tournaments and are constant speaker award winners. Even my partner had some prestige by winning a speaker award at Wake Forest, a tournament we weren't even close to our best at.

Looking at all of this made me wonder: what am I doing wrong? Is there something that I'm not getting or doing that is holding me back from reaching my potential? Because I can't wrap my mind in the fact that I've never won a speaker award, I'm not consistently clearing at tournaments that I should be clearing at, all puts the pressure on me to show that I'm better than what the stats are showing me.

At the end of all of this however, the pressure won over me. At the end of the season I was the only active novice debater at GMU that hasn't won a speaker award. A lot of people might say that this shouldn't matter and what matters is what you put into a debate round, and those people are real for that, but I beg to understand why I put so much effort and work into something and not get any results back? That's a question that will have to roll over to next season and see!

Honestly, typing and putting my thoughts here on this page doesn't really show the amount of highs and lows I had this season, debate is definitely not for the weak and despite not having a tournament that went my way, if you were to ask me a year ago today about all of this I had to go through, I would have still said yes. Despite the amount I struggled this year (especially over the second semester), there was just a ton of benefits of doing debate and one core part was the community, especially the one at George Mason.

The Goal

The bottom line is simple: I have a goal, and I'm not stopping until I get there. That goal is the National Debate Tournament — the NDT. For some people, it's a tournament they attend every year. For me, it represents something I couldn't have imagined a year ago: it's a testament that someone with no background in this activity, can reach the top tier of collegiate policy debate.

There were moments this season — more than a few — where I considered walking away. Where the losses stacked up, the self-doubt crept in, self-esteem and confidence feel to an all time low, and quitting felt like the reasonable thing to do. I didn't. Not because it was easy, but because I kept coming back to the same thought: the people who reach the places they're not supposed to reach are almost never the ones who were the most ready at the start. They're the ones who stayed, stayed till the very end.

I'm a first-year CS major who had never stood behind a debate stand in a competitive round before this year. Coming from a school like George Mason, where we have a ton of talent on our own, just reaching the NDT is not a realistic goal on paper for a lot of people, but I can't let that be a reason to stop me.

Now I'm not expecting to getting to the NDT within a year, that's just not going to happen unless something comes up within the season, so I need to focus on what's in front of me now: JV. I see a plate of tournaments next year that I'm keeping an eye on and with the arms sales topic being selected as next season's topic, there is some really good opportunity here for me to excel at the JV level. So, we'll have to see what the next year is going to bring for me, and see what the next 3 years is going to change in me.

I can't change the past, but I still have a hold on the future.

So, if you are a current high schooler, a senior in high school, or even a college student who is in their freshman or sophomore year of college, consider debate as an activity. No matter the background, I think the overwhelming amount of things you can learn would be an extraordinary amount not worth to lose.

Stats

• 2026 GMU Novice Debater of the Year
• 61 debates
• 49.2% win rate
• 45% prelim win rate
• 70% elim win rate
• Highest finish: Semis (West Point, JV/Novice Nationals)
• No speaker awards
• Schools I've beaten: Liberty, Binghamton, Towson, Wake Forest, Navy, Suffolk, Indiana, New Mexico, Boston College, Johnson County Community, Rochester, Houston.
• Memorable wins:
  • Beating Liberty (1st seed) 2-1 in Octos at West Point
  • Beating Binghamton (3rd seed) 2-1 in Octos at Navy and JV/Novice Nationals
  • Beating Indiana at Navy round 7 which sealed our comeback from being 0-3 down to 4-3.

Tournament	Average Speaks	Record	Prelim Record	Elims Record	Finish
George Mason	28.1 (39/58)	3-3	3-2	0-1 (3-0 loss to Liberty)	Octafinalists
West Point	28.4 (40/68)	6-4	3-3	3-1 (3-0 loss to West Point)	Semifinalists
Oklahoma	28.7 (16/24)	3-3	3-3	0-0	Did Not Break
Wake Forest	29.0 (15/94)	2-4	2-4	0-0	Did Not Break
Navy	28.8 (18/38)	5-5	4-4	1-1 (2-1 loss to NYU)	Quarterfinalists
JV/Novice Nationals	28.6 (43/64)	6-3	3-3	3-0 (BYE in Semis)	Semifinalists
ADA Nationals	28.8 (18/46)	3-3	3-3	0-0	Did Not Break
CEDA Nationals	28.5 (167/176)	2-6	2-6	0-0	Did Not Break