On Jan. 9, the West High Debate team traveled to Des Moines to compete at the annual Iowa High School Speech Association State Debate tournament. Led by head coach Sophia Gustafson, West students debated across four different events: Public Forum, Policy, Lincoln-Douglas, and Congressional debate.
In Lincoln-Douglas debate, Faisal Hamzeh ’27 was a semifinalist and placed third in speaker points. Jerry Li ’26 was the runner-up. In Policy Debate, partners Faizaan Ahmed ’27 and Eddie El-Fadil ’27 were semifinalists and won the second and seventh speaker awards, respectively. In Public Forum, Owen Downey ’27 and Titan Ross ’26 were quarterfinalists, Ethan Ding ’28 and Otto Schimmel ’28 were semifinalists and Waad Dafalla ’26 and Aahana Gupta ’27 were the state champions. Gupta and Ross also earned speaker awards for second and seventh place, respectively. In Congress A House, Ibrahim Abudagga ’27 and Ella Haim ’27 placed 16th and 17th, respectively. In B House, Emily Kleiman ’27 placed 11th.
Li recounts the anxiety the team experienced in the moments leading up to the announcement of their collective win.
“Waiting for the sweepstakes winners to get announced was memorable. It felt like a massive relief,” Li said. “Sophia really managed to build the stress throughout the tournament as she was constantly saying things like ‘I need so and so to win this round.’ That, combined with the fact that we forgot to bring the trophy and that our winning margin was so low, made the moments leading up to us winning super tense.”
Gustafson attributes the win to the team’s self-motivated, yet collaborative nature.
“The students are largely self-motivated. That’s what I love most about coaching debate — the kids want to win more than I do,” Gustafson said. “Winning state six times in a row is a testament to how well we work as a team.”
Up next, the ICW Debate team is focused on preparing for national circuit tournaments, such as the Tournament of Champions in April and NSDA Nationals in June.
