Another Strong Year for Scarsdale Debate

With words like “spike” and “break”, being thrown around, the uninformed listener might think that the kids in Mr. Vaughan’s physics room are engaged in a varsity sport rather than a Lincoln-Douglas debate.

For those unfamiliar with this competitive form of verbal engagement, Lincoln-Douglas, also known as LD, is a style of debate in which two individuals face off in a series of timed case presentations and rebuttals to objectively determine which participant has the better debating skills. The activity is incredibly intense, with top debaters averaging over 250 words spoken a minute to squeeze every argument in their arsenal into a debate round.

So what exactly is the advantage of having a team in such an individual activity? The amount of work that goes into preparing a topic is immense, and by working together to research, prepare and write positions, the SHS LD debaters can be fully prepared for their rounds. December’s issue or “resolved case” was “It is morally permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence”. The team spent more than 12 hours a week studying the case to come up with a 95 page, single-spaced document that covered every affirmative and negative argument they could construct.

Currently, Geoffrey Kristof is ranked No. 1 in Lincoln-Douglas debate. He achieved this ranking when he won the Blake Tournament in Minneapolis in mid-December. He moved from third to first in the country and has held onto this ranking with the semifinalist standing at the Harvard Invitational Tournament that took place during President’s Week. For Kristof, a debate is more than just a competition: it’s a forum in which all possible arguments for and against an issue can be explored.

Perhaps even more interesting than Scarsdale’s tournament results however is Fantasydebate.com, a website created by Senior Alon Daks, which is recognized by debate coaches nationwide as the official ranking system for LD. Daks, who comes from a family of top debaters, started to develop the website during his sophomore year. Prior to Fantasydebate.com, there was no real fair way to determine who was the best debater in the country. Rankings were determined by tournament results, but the system did not take into account the level of difficulty of the debater’s bracket. For example, if a debater defeated 8 unranked opponents to reach the final round, as opposed to beating top ranked opponents, they would receive the same number of ranking points. Fantasydebate.com fixed this issue by using an Elo based ranking system. The Elo system, developed by Arpad Elo, a physics professor, was originally used to rank chess players. In the Elo based ranking system, each debater has a number rating which increases and decreases based on the results of individual debate rounds rather than the results of overall tournaments. The winner of a debate between two debaters gains a certain number of points in his rating system and the losing debater loses the same number of points. The number of points won or lost in a debate depends on the difference in the ratings of the debaters; therefore, a debater gains more points by beating a higher-rated debater than one who is lower-rated regardless of in what round they achieve their victory. Daks’s site is visited 33,000 times per month, and has collected data from over 32,250 individual debate rounds in the three years it has been running.

In addition to Kristof and Daks this year’s team has several strong debaters including Zach Edelman, Ben Fife, Sam Natbony, Grant Reitler, and Larry Millstein all who are ranked in the top 100. Five of Scarsdale’s debaters have already qualified for the Tournament of Champions, the most prestigious LD tournament of the year which takes place the first weekend in May at the University of Kentucky.

Pictured at top: Grant Reiter (Junior), Stephen Friedman (Junior), Zach Edelman(Senior), Doug Meyers (Senior), Alon Daks (Senior), Jared Young (Class of 2011), Sam Natbony (Junior), Ben Fife (Senior), Josh Annex (Sophomore)

Contributor Will Heffner is a senior at Scarsdale High School and has been a lifelong resident of Scarsdale. In his free time, he enjoys acting, and playing music. If you would like to contact Will for any questions or comments, he can be reached at willheffner@gmail.com.