In front of five judges and a room filled with spectators, seniors Katie Carpenter and Leah Goldberg competed against a team from New Trier in the final round of the varsity state debate tournament. Carpenter and Goldberg took second place, having won six out of eight debates leading up to their loss in the finals.
“Obviously, we were hoping for the win, but I think we’re still really proud of how we did,” said Goldberg. “We had some good debates, a good win in semifinals. So even though we wanted to win, it definitely could have gone a lot worse and we’re pretty happy about it.”
Carpenter and Goldberg compete in policy debate, an activity in which students either affirm or negate a proposed government policy. They competed as a team in all rounds.
Goldberg earned fourth place and Carpenter earned seventh in the individual speaker awards. Individual speaker awards are presented to debaters according to speaker points, which are given based on the clarity of a debaters’ speech, argument content and the quality and presentation of their argument.
The partnership beat a team from the University of Chicago Laboratory School, also known as UC Lab, in the semifinals, with the judges voting 2-1.
“We had a very big win in the semifinals against a pretty good team, UC Lab, and it felt pretty good,” said Carpenter. “We were expecting to do well because we’ve been preparing a lot for it, so it was good to see our hard work pay off.”
According to head coach Michael Greenstein, the team had a game plan to defeat UC Lab and executed it well.
“That victory was incredibly meaningful because they’ve been competing against that team for all four years of high school, and to win that debate in that moment when the stakes were so high, as opposed to just another debate in another tournament, really demonstrates their ability to perform under immense pressure,” Greenstein said.
Carpenter and Goldberg, along with sophomores Ethan Camp and Joseph Rozenblat, qualified for the Tournament of Champions, also known as the TOC, a national policy debate tournament, scheduled to take place from April 20 to April 22 in Lexington, Ky.
Camp and Rozenblat are the first all-sophomore team from Glenbrook North to qualify for the TOC in school history, Greenstein said.
Carpenter and Goldberg intend to debate as a team at Dartmouth College next year. The pair have been debating together since their sophomore year and have worked to strengthen their communication to make their partnership more cohesive.
“Now that I’ve seen how we can reap the benefits of good dedication like practice and preparation, I’m definitely going to be putting that mindset into preparing for the TOC,” said Carpenter. “I want to beat New Trier at the TOC because we lost to them in the state finals, so I got some revenge motives there.”