The Myers Park High School Speech and Debate Team is proud to announce the 2009 accepted teams for the PFDebate.com National Public Forum Challenge II competition to be held following the Laird Lewis Invitational at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, NC on January 11, 2009.
Teams will be competing in three prelim rounds, which will determine seeding. The subsequent rounds will be double-elimination and challenge-style where the winning teams pick their opponents!
Leigha Matoasky & Graeme Crews
Academic Magnet High School (SC)
Zachary Winder & Matthias Ng
American Heritage High School (FL)
Wesely Dixon & Shannon Farrell
American Heritage High School (FL)
Alex Kennedy & Zach Simonetti
Asheville High School (NC)
Ali McGrath & Jesse Kessel
Asheville High School (NC)
Andrew Copland & Mikie Rooney
Cary Academy (NC)
Jay O’Brien & Kellen Heniford
Charlotte Latin School (NC)
Josh Elkin & Rahman Haq
Cold Spring Harbor High School (NY)
Grace Wallack & Dede Pless
Durham Academy (NC)
Robert Kindman & Josh Zoffer
Durham Academy (NC)
Lindsay Young & Deanne Steffy
McDowell High School (PA)
Eimile Stokes & Joey Heffner
North Mecklenburg High School (NC)
Jordan Flanzraich & Harrison Grussmark
Ransom Everglades (FL)
Taylor Karns & Christopher Oman
Roosevelt High School (IA)
Mohit Bansal & Raghav Aggarwal
The Harker School (CA)
Kaavya Gowda & Kelsey Hilbrich
The Harker School (CA)
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
North carolina isnt horribly over-represented or anything…
Although we had more applicants this year than last year, we had more proportionally from NC.
Did you apply?
How many teams applied?
It’s not like NC didn’t earn those spots– they have a ton of great teams. This isn’t really any different from any other round robin, its just more publicized because its on this web site. Public Forum RRs always are heavy on the in state teams.
A perspective on the competitiveness of this field:
NFL Nationals 2008 3rd, 7th, 11th
Novice Nationals Champion 2007
Yale Champions 2008
Wake Champion 2007
Wake Finalist 2007, 2008
Crestian 2007 Champions
Blue Key 2008 Finalists and Semifinalists
Harvard 2008 Semifinalists
Laird Lewis 2008 Finalists
NC State Champions
SC State Champions
And endless Doubles, Octas, Quarters placements at Harvard, UPenn, TOCs, NCFLs, etc. I think this will be a very good Challenge!
To answer your question, I did not apply.
Something is odd with that list, both Durham teams and Harker teams applied but only 1/3 Ransom teams applied?
I am not going to reveal who applied and did not apply.
PFman: Both of our teams from Durham applied. Idk about Harker, but I know Austin and Amanda and Charlie and Jose from Ransom chose not to apply.
Jason, does Novice Nationals have PF?
Jay O’brien will take home the golden key
We (ransom everglades CS) could not apply based on previous commitments but I am not sure about Jose and Charlie
Good question. A team put that on their application but I cannot verify it. I did not need to verify it because I verified enough info about them, but still, weird.…
Novice Nationals (Woodward) does not have PF confirmed…so you might wanna strike that from the achievement list.
There is a novice nationals in Iowa that has Public Forum. I know it was pretty competitive when we went a couple years ago. I would assume it has only grown in recent years.
PFMan, I am confused about “both Harker teams applied”? Harker has 20+ PF teams so could you explain this “oddity” you describe? The statement in itself is confusing.
Harker is honored to have been selected and we look forward to both the Laird Lewis and the PF Challenge in January!
I don’t see the big deal, but just to defend myself or clarify confusion, Charlie and I were not able to apply. We had previous commitments, or else we would have been sure to apply. Last year the National Public Forum Challenge and Laird Lewis were splendid tournaments (although again, we were not able to apply) so I’m expecting this one to be a blast as well.
I am not quite sure as to why having a large number of North Carolina teams is a bad thing. Every single NC team on the list broke at Wake Forest, and all the NC teams except two have had at least one member attend NFL Nationals in Public Forum. North Carolina is over-represented simply because North Carolina is one of the strongest states in Public Forum. I am quite excited about the competition that we have at the Challenge this year. Hope to see y’all there!
I’m very suspicious about this team that got 3rd at Nationals. That was a pretty mojo tournament from the teams that were in the top 5.
I’m so excited I was selected for the Public Forum Challenge II! As the Yale and Novice National champion, my partner and I worked for all of last year to build up our resume for this tournament. And we love Jason Kline, he’s the man!
Leigha’s last name is “Mataosky”. Just saying.
It frustrates me when people don’t put their real names (Maria and Boring). If you are going to make a joke, let everyone know your name so we can then congratulate you for the side-splitting laughter you provided us with…
On a better note, the Challenge looks like a potential blood bath. Should be fun. See ya’ll there!
Boring, I don’t know if you were trying to be funny or sarcastic or something but I find that post to be rather offensive.
I dont know what you are saying about the team that got 3rd at nationals Shlomo however I can assure you they are certainly deserved of that title along with many other late breaks that they have earned. Also, Maria Theresa Gonzalez.….what school are you from?
Maria: I’m pretty sure you aren’t the 2008 Yale champion, considering Graeme and Leigha won it this year…
Jay: Thanks man.
I find it humorous that the smack-talk is coming from teams NOT in the Challenge while those IN the Challenge are all polite and what-not!
I am excited about this year’s event. In case you did no t hear, the sponsorship provided by PFDebate.com has been increased to $1500, so the winning team splits $1000, and the 2nd place team splits $500!
Btw, what does “mojo” mean when qualifying a debate tournament? From my knowledge of nats, we shouldn’t critique others for making it through days of grueling competition against many of the best debaters in the nation. There’s a reason they made it that far in the toughest tournament of the year. Intellect, a ton of work, extreme polish under extreme pressure, and a bit of luck come to mind…
And Josh: Thanks for throwing that out there.
Actually, I am the 2008 Yale champion in Public Forum Debate and would like someone to prove otherwise! My partner, Raghav Aggarwal, and I won Yale and will return to take the Public Forum Challenge (the partner listed on this page is a typo). And Jay, I am from the Harker school.
What Novice Nationals did you win Maria and what year?
Graeme, to answer you I think “mojo” means phony, as in non-legit. Used in a sentence: “That shady person sold me a mojo ipod touch. I touched it and it broke!”
Having gone against Josh at Blue Key they are a very good team. I really don’t understand all the controversy, but these crazy posts make me laugh.
Maria-Theresa Gonzalez: http://yale.tabroom.com/results/2008/Public%20Forum/
kthanksbye.
Trying to discredit me anyway possible eh? Mr. Crews, it seems as though you have went to the extent of setting up your own website in order to steal my glory!
Weird people out there.
Any guesses on what the topic for January will be?
I’m sorry Maria, you’re right. You won Yale University’s public forum debate tournament. I won the Yale (pronounced “yah-lee”) high school tournament, a 15 team local tournament. Sorry about that confusion Maria.
I thought I had a comment…but I am actually at loss for words…
Haha this board is hilarious.
Jesse: I have no idea, but a trend I’ve noticed over the years is that the January topic is usually “awesome” in some aspect. 2006 – intelligent design: good, weirdish tho, 2007 – lobbyists= AMAZING!, and 2008-civil disobedience=awkward, but interesting, good debate most of the time. I’m not too worried. NFL usually doesn’t let us down in January.
It’s not Jordan Flanzraish it is Jordan Flanzraich.
uhhh lobbyists sucked.…
and civil disobedience was the all time worst resolution ever…we are not LDers and do NOT CARE ABOUT JUSTICE or pursuing it…our standard paradigm is util…we like stacking bodies and seeing who has the smaller stack…don’t be jerks topic committee…give us a res that is a plan of some sort (like all the good res have been)
example
–US preemptive strike on Iran
–soft partition iraq
Is this how you spell it? His dad judged us at Blue Key…
Jordan I am sorry…I had to go off faxed copies of the registration forms…I will note the change.
I would just like to note that the last two comments made by “Josh Zoffer” were not actually me. That being said, I did actually like the civil disobedience topic. It required logic and theory as opposed to just statistics, which was a nice change of pace. I did not like the Fairness Doctrine…that was just a subpar topic.