“LILLIAN NIXON DEBATING CHALLENGE 2018”

This year, the Debating Society saw the appointment of our new President Avantha Jayasinghe, and Secretary Monika Saleh come within weeks of preparation having started for the debating season’s first contest, the prestigious Lillian Nixon Debating Challenge, hosted by Ladies’ College, Colombo. Avantha and Monika did very well to organize and train our very new debaters, who were all novices, and all coming out from an intense week of Inter House Debating before the weekend of this tournament.

Team A saw Husein and Janek join Avantha to enter the realm of debating, and on Saturday (23^RD September), they won 3 out of 4 of their debates in a very competitive breaking round, which was fantastic to watch, especially in such a new team! Unfortunately, they just barely missed out on reaching the Quarter Finals on Sunday, however, our Team B, outdid all expectations when they went on to reach the Quarter Finals of the Novice breaks on Saturday! Sara, Yenuli and Prisha (with Theekshana as reserve) did so incredibly well and reached the Semi-Final of this category on Sunday morning, going on to defeat a very tough Royal College team, and ultimately achieving “Finalist” status!!

This is the second year in a row that #TeamBSC have reached the Novice Finals at Lillian Nixon, and it is a testament to our school’s debating prowess that our Novice team did this well. In the Final, our team lost out to CIS with a split judgment of 3-4 going against them. They were named Runners-Up, but to achieve second place in such a competitive tournament, while debating for the first time outside of school was a remarkable achievement!!

Ms. Deepa and I are very proud of them, and are very confident that this is just the beginning of what will prove to be yet another successful year for our debaters.

• Ms. Mahum Kidwai (Debating Teacher-in-Charge)