CANADA'S PREMIER DEBATE ACADEMY
Led by world renowned speech and debate coach Frankie Cena
In 2016 Frankie Cena decided to start FDT Academy. The name says everything. Our goal is to foster a passion and talent for debate and speech in our students.
Our dynamic team of instructors are led under the guidance of Frankie Cena with his 10 years of success as a coach of debate and speech. Frankie's skills are sought after by students around the world and at FDT we will go the extra mile to ensure our students reach the highest levels of success possible.
Read through our website or contact us for more information.
Explore our new Academy Space at #260-1916 West Broadway!
Watch footage from our 2018 Gala and Awards Night!
Stay up to date on how Frankie Cena's students are doing at competitions both locally and around the world!
We have some exciting news from the Worlds Individuals Public Speaking and Debate Championships in Toronto this past weekend! Angelina Zhang has placed as the 7th place speaker overall in the entire world and Nicholas Viegas placed 10th overall! Angelina and Nicholas were named in the top 10 of over 100 of the world’s best speakers from 11 countries including the US, Australia, and China among others.
Moreover Angelina made it to the finals for impromptu speaking and debate, while Nicholas made finals for interpretative reading, placing 4th overall in that category.
Congratulations you two!
This weekend hundreds of BC's best debaters competed in the UBC Spring High School Tournament. We are pleased to announce that FDT's own Jason Gu and Anthony Chu are the new Senior Champions! Moreover we want to congratulate Bianca Dammholz and Saara Meghji and Vivian Gu and Ellen Li for making it to the break-rounds. The good news doesn’t end there. Alice Xu and Aurora Zhang were named 3rd place junior team overall with Sarah Sheng and Angela Lu placing 4th overall in the junior category.
As individual speakers many of FDT's brightest students performed exceptionally. In the senior category, FDT's own instructor Saara Meghji was named the top speaker overall, while Vivian Gu came in 4th, Allan Lee came in 5th, Bianca Dammholz came in 7th, Angelina Zhang came in 9th, Ellen Li came in 11th, Jason Guo came in 13th, Anthony Chu came in 14th, and Kiran Basra came in 15th. In the junior category Sarah Sheng was named the 4th place speaker overall, Eric Li came in 5th, Alex Logan came in 9th,. Othman Mekhloufi came in 10th, Angela Lu came in 12th, Jena Yue came in 13th, Emily Qiu came in 14th, and Athens Wu came in 15th. Moreover, Eric Li was named the top Novice speaker, Emily Qiu was named the 2nd best novice speaker, and Jerry Zhang was named the 3rd place novice speaker.
We congratulate all of our students and instructors for their hard work in preparation for this tournament!
Just this past weekend we took a team of some of FDT’s best debaters along with Canadian National Debating Team member Naomi Panovka, to the annual Prague Spring Debate Championship.
We have some great results to announce. After breaking to the octofinals, FDT advanced to the quarterfinals eventually placing 5th in an incredibly challenging and competitive tournament.
Moreover Grace Lee placed as the 8th best speaker overall and Jason Guo placed 4th. Congratulations guys!
FDT is just finishing up an exciting weekend at one of the world's most competitive debate tournaments, the Harvard World Schools Invitational. We are so proud to announce that FDT Purple finished 4th overall, in a field of 62 of the world's best teams including the national teams of many countries. Congratulations to Alice Xu, Aurora Zhang, Jena Yue, and Athens Wu for their hard work in not only breaking to Octo-Finals, but fighting their way to the Semi-Finals where they lost to the Canadian National Team. What's even more astounding is that these girls are only in Grade 8 and Grade 9!
More than that we want to congratulate Saara Meghji and Angelina Zhang, who were debating for the Canadian National Team and made it to the Octo-Finals, as well as Allan Lee, whose team made it to the Quarter-Finals. Moreover, the Danish National Debate Team coached by Frankie Cena, Dena Tabyanian, and Arsalan Ghaemi, made it to the Quarter Finals! For speaker awards we want to congratulate Allan Lee for placing as the 7th best speaker overall, Saara and Angelina who tied for 8th place speaker overall, and Aurora Zhang who was named the 5th best novice speaker.
We are so proud of students and their hard work and of course their success wouldn't be possible without the hard work of their chaperones and coaches. Well done guys!
FDT ended up sending over 30 of it’s students to the BC Provincial Debate Championships that were held this weekend in Victoria, BC and we have some great results to announce after a very tough and competitive weekend of debate. We want to congratulate Leo Wang and Judy Rhee who were named the 4th place senior team in the province, and Allan Lee and Jamin Feng who came in 6th. In the junior category we want to recognize Lauren Meikle and Emily Ni for their outstanding achievement in being named the Champion junior team. Moreover, congrats to Peter Zhang who was the top junior speaker and Lauren Meikle who came in 5th place. We also want to congratulate David Xia who was named the 3rd place novice speaker and Jerry Zhang, who came in 4th place. We will also be sending multiple teams to the national debate championships! Eric Li and Jonathan Chu, Alex Logan and Jessie Liu, and Sean Oh, will be going on to the Junior Debate Championships later this year in Quebec. Allan Lee and Jamin Feng, along with Judy Rhee and Leo Wang will be advancing to the Senior National Debate Championships in Halifax later this year. We wish all our teams the best of luck!
This weekend the Bilingual Debate Provincial Championships were held at West Point Grey Academy and we have some amazing results to announce.
Eric Li was named the 2nd place Speaker in the Junior category and came in 5th place as a team. Moreover, Vivian Gu was the Top Speaker in the Senior category, while Angelina Zhang came in 3rd place, and Emily Ni came in 5th place. Emily Ni and Nikki Wu were named the Top Senior Team, while Vivian Gu came in 4th place as a team.
We are so excited for Eric, Nikki, Vivian, and Emily who will go to French Debate Nationals in Halifax this year. We wish them the best of luck!
On Friday night in Langley FDT brought 17 teams to the 2nd Annual R.E. Mountain Novice Invitational. We are so proud to announce that FDT took the top awards in the Grade 4-6 and Grade 7-8 category. Vanessa Zhang and Alice Shen were the top Grade 7-8 team and Aiden Han and Jerry Li were the top Grade 4-6 team. Moreover Cynthia Wang and Edward Gao were the 2nd place team in the 7-8 category. In the 4-6 category Veronica Guo and Vincent Guo came in 2nd place and Cynthia and Athena Yu came in 3rd.
For speaker awards, Edward was the top speaker in Grade 7-8 category while Cynthia came in 2nd. Veronica came in 2nd in the Grade 4-6 category, Aiden came in 3rd, and Athena came in 4th.
We are so happy about the achievements and hard work of our students and look forward to future successes!
Just yesterday, Judy Rhee and Leo Wang made it to the final round in the senior category at Lower Mainland North Regionals. It was an incredibly tough tournament with some of the best debaters in the province competing. We are so proud of their accomplishments! In the junior category Eric Li and Jonathan Chu came in 2nd place as a team while Peter Zhang and Michael Wu came 3rd, and Sarah Sheng and Angela Lu came 5th. In the novice category David Xia and Richard Chen were the top team overall.
Individually Allan Lee placed as 4th place senior speaker overall, Leo Wang placed 5th, Judy Rhee placed 6th, and Nick Young placed 10th. In the junior category Peter Zhang was the 1st place speaker overall, Michael Wu was 4th place, Koby Chen was 5th, Sarah Sheng was 7th, Anthony Chu was 8th, and Eric Li was 9th. David Xia was the 3rd place novice speaker.
If that wasn't enough in total we have 10 students going on to Provincials. Judy Rhee, Leo Wang, Eric Li, Jonathan Chu, Peter Zhang, Michael Wu, Sarah Sheng, Angela Lu, David Xia, and Richard Chen will be attending the Law Foundation Provincial Tournament in Victoria this March! Moreover, Allan Lee, Jamin Feng, Jason Guo, and Anthony Chu are alternates to go to provincials.
We are so proud of our students and their achievements and we wish them the best of luck at provincials!
Just last week it was announced that FDT Student Angeline Wang has qualified for the National Debating Team of Wales. She along with 4 other high-school students will compete at the Worlds School Debate Championship in Sri Lanka this summer. We wish Angeline and her team the best of luck at World’s!
This weekend was the annual BC Provincial Speech Championships. We have exciting news to share with you. 7 FDT students will be going to Speech Nationals this year. We are pleased to announce that in the Senior Division, Angelina Zhang came 4th overall, Judy Rhee came 5th, Anthony Chu came 6th.
In the Interpretative Reading category Anthony came 3rd and Judy was a Finalist. In the Impromptu Speech category Anthony came 1st and Angelina came 2nd. In Debate, Angelina came 2nd.
In the Junior Division Nora Zhu came 3rd, Katherine Feng came 5th, Jena Yue came 6th, and Eric Li came 7th.
In the Interpretative Reading category Katherine came 2nd while Jena was a Finalist. In the Impromptu Speech category Nora came 2nd, and Eric was a Finalist. In Persuasive Speech Jena came 2nd. In Debate, Katherine came 2nd and Eric 3rd.
We are so happy with all our students and their amazing work. Now begins the hard work to prepare for Nationals!
FDT has just returned from the snow covered campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where we computer in the Tournament of Champions for the World Scholar's Cup! Our two teams qualified after competing in the global rounds in either Melbourne or Barcelona and they had a blast competing against the cream of the crop from around the world at Yale.
Here are some of the outstanding results. Both of our teams did well in debate. The team of Vicky Zhang, Fiona Li, and Jolin Yu won a Silver medal as a team. The team of Julia Guo, Vanessa Zhang, and Aurora Zhang won a Gold medal as a team. Furthermore our students performed well individually.In Individual Writing, Aurora, Julia, and Jolin all won Silver medals. In the Scholar's Challenge, Fiona won a Silver medal for Literature subject as did Jolin, while Aurora won a Silver medal in Social Studies, Vanessa won Silver in Art and Literature, and Vicky won a Gold medal in Art. Finally in Individual Debate, Jolin and Julia won Silver medals, and Fiona and Vanessa won Gold. Moreover, in addition to winning a Gold medal, Aurora placed 36th individually, in a field of hundreds of the world's best junior debaters!
Its been another outstanding UBC Fall High School Tournament for FDT Academy. Lets start with the results. Out of 8 teams breaking to Quarter-Finals in the Junior Category, 5 were from FDT. Congratulations to Peter Zhang and Michael Wu and Athens Wu and Jena Yue for breaking to the Quarter-Finals. Further congratulations to Eric Li and Jonathan Chu who made it to Semi-Finals. Finally, after a contentious Final round between FDT students Anthony Chu, Jason Guo, Sarah Sheng, and Angela Lu, we are pleased to announce your Champion Junior Team was Jason and Anthony! We want to still commend Angela and Sarah who were well deserving of being Finalists.
That's not all. We had great results in the senior category as well. We had multiple teams break to the Semi-Finals including Saara Meghji and Angelina Zhang and Kiran Basra and Maggie MacInnis. We would also like to congratulate Ellen Li and Vivian Gu and Leo Wang and Judy Rhee for being finalists! We are so happy with the final results and want to congratulate all of our instructors and students for their hard work in the past few weeks.
This weekend two FDT teams along with Tonya and Arsalan, traveled to Ithaca, New York to participate in the the Alfred Tuna Snider World Schools Debate Tournament at Cornell University.
We want to congratulate FDT Red for breaking to the Quarter-Final round at the tournament! The team consisted of FDT students Jamin Feng, Jason Guo, Sarah Sheng, Jessica Chen and were joined as well by Naomi Panovka, who is currently on the Canadian National Debating Team. We also want to congratulate FDT Blue who very narrowly missed breaking to the Quarter-Final. Congrats to Kelly Ho, Nora Zhu, Grace Lee, Angela Lu, and Stanford Guo for doing so well!
In terms of speaker awards we want to congratulate Jamin Feng for placing as the 4th place speaker in the entire tournament, Naomi for placing 9th, and Grace for placing 10th.
All in all a great tournament and we hope to be back in the future!
On October 19 several of our instructors and staff were invited to the inaugural Canada Sunshine Foundation Establishment and Awards Ceremony in Richmond. Anna, Arsalan, Bianca, Cathy, and Tonya all enjoyed this excellent event and Arsalan even had the opportunity to deliver a moving and inspirational speech about the importance of youth and giving back to the community.
Several of our own students are members of the Canada Sunshine Foundation. They were presented awards by our instructors at the ceremony and they were celebrated for raising over $3,000 for the Canuck Place Children’s Hospice which provides palliative care to children and families in BC.
We are so grateful to have been part of an event that celebrates such important accomplishments and look forward to an even bigger and better event next year.
This weekend the first ever Provincial Qualifier for the BP National Debate Championships was held at Crofton House Academy. It was an exciting tournament featuring some of the best junior debaters in the province. FDT is so happy to announce some excellent results!
We want to congratulate Alice Xu, Eric Li, and Aurora Zhang for their 11th,12th,and 13th place speaker rankings. Additionally We want to congratulate Aurora and Alice for breaking to the Semi-final round as well as Jesse Liu who made it to the final round with his partner and qualified for the national BP tournament.
In 2004, I made it to the finals of the Burnaby School District's Annual Grade 7 public speaking competition. I didn't win – but placing 2nd – still changed my life. It inspired in me a love of public speaking and sent me on a journey I am still on today as the owner of a speech and debate academy, and also as one of the hosts of the prestigious Miss World competition. Earlier this year, 14 years after I competed, I was invited to be a guest judge at the Burnaby District Finals. I saw the top 8 students in Burnaby, who had advanced to this final event after having excelled at their school and regional events. These kids were eloquent, intelligent, and inspiring. I was overwhelmed with their talent. A huge part of my life mission is to give back to young people in my community and around the world. Before the winner was announced, I decided to make a special announcement of my own. All 8 Finalists would win $3000 scholarships which would provide them with a full year of speech and debate coaching at FDT Academy! I am so honoured to give them an opportunity that I wasn’t given as a kid to help them one day become world champion speakers and debaters.
- Frankie Cena
Most all of our graduating students have already began their first semesters at university. But did you know that universities in the UK start later? Just last week one of FDT’s brightest instructors and former students finally found herself at the university of her dreams.
Read our interview with Rosa Rahimi about why she choose to attend Cambridge University after a sterling record of debate success.
Our very own Matthew Yu will be competing on this year’s Canada’s Smartest Person Junior, a televised competition where he will face off against 11 of the smartest youngsters from across the country! He follows in the footsteps of FDT Founder and CEO Frankie Cena who competed on the show in 2016. He is the youngest competitor on the show and the only one from Vancouver. Nevertheless we are sure he will make a big splash on the show.
The show will premiere on November 14th on CBC!
FDT has had over a dozen students on the Canadian National Debating Team so far in our history but this week we reached another milestone: our first student to make the US National Debating Team.
FDT's own Victor Tong has been selected to join the development team, and Victor will in the future, have a chance to make the full team and represent the USA at competitions around the world. Victor was selected among just 11 other students, which is impressive considering how many excellent debaters compete in the US.
We wish Victor the best of luck on Team USA!
This week we interviewed Ashley Phord-Toy. Ashley has had a checkered record in debate; she has won countless tournaments and represented Canada at international competitions several times in places like Australia, South Africa, and Croatia.
But what made her choose Stanford University in California over the ivy-covered campuses of the East Coast? And what is behind her now 5-year long passion for debate? Visit our website to find out more!
The 3rd Global Round of the World Scholar's Cup has just finished up in Melbourne, Australia and what a competition it was! FDT sent two junior teams to the competition and, with the assistance of Tonya Cena and Jacqueline Belzberg, they battled it out against over 1,000 of the world's top young minds across four exciting competitive events.
We are happy to announce that both teams: Vanessa Zhang, Aurora Zhang, and Katherine Feng, as well as Fiona Li, Vicky Zhang, and Jolin Yu, have qualified to the Tournament of Champions at Yale University along with the two other FDT teams who qualified after the global round in Barcelona.
All of our students have worked very hard to get this far and we hope they give their brains a break before returning to school, and FDT, in just a couple of weeks!
Jason Guo and Leo Wang have placed as the top team overall in the UBC Summer Debate Championship! Moreover FDT's own Alison Lee was a finalist and two of our teams, Allan Lee and Grace Lee, and Anthony Chu and Angela Lu, made it to the semi-finals.
Jason was the top novice speaker as well as the top speaker overall. For the rest of the individual speaker rankings Leo placed 3rd, Allan placed 4th, Grace placed 8th, and Alison placed 9th,
We are so happy for all of our students to have performed so exceptionally. This is the last tournament of the summer before FDT begins our Fall term!
This week we interviewed Anokh and Amolak Singh Dhillon. These brothers are two of Frankie's oldest students and after a successful high school career in debate they both went to the University of British Columbia in Arts. Just this year Amolak learned he had been accepted to the UBC School of Medicine. He will join his brother Anokh there in the fall as they both pursue an MD.
It’s a little unusual. Most debaters are always told they would make great lawyers or politicians. But the brothers found that the skills they learned in debate would transfer to the world of medicine in many interesting ways. Read our interview to find out more!
This year at FDT we have so many exciting success and our students have reached the highest levels of success imaginable. As happy as we are about our successes the end of the year is bittersweet as we have to say goodbye to some of our oldest students and instructors as they move on.
In the next few weeks we want to highlight some of these students and reflect on how debate has helped them chart a path to their future. This week we asked our very former student and instructor Andrew Yun, who just placed as the 5th best debater in the world in Croatia, about his high school debate career and all the doors debate has helped open for him.
After a smashing success in the local round of Scholar's Cup. FDT brought 2 teams to the global round in Barcelona, Spain, facing off against over 1000 of the worlds brightest and best students. Our junior team and senior team competed in 4 categories including writing, debate, Scholar's bowl. and Scholar's challenge. We are so pleased to announce that both teams performed excellently and were chosen to compete in the Tournament of Champions at Yale University.
Congratulations to our teams as well as Cathy Cena for chaperoning and Anna Saint for all her hard work coaching!
The 5th annual edition of the Prague Spring Debate Championship was the most intense and competitive yet with 64 of the world's best teams, many of whom are going on to compete at the Worlds Schools Debate Championships in Croatia in the next few days. We are pleased to announce that against this fierce competition, after 6 rounds, BOTH of FDT's teams broke to the elimination rounds! Congratulations to FDT Blue (Angela Lu, Anthony Chu, Nikki Wu, Lilya Shen, Calvin Zhang) for making it to the Partial Double Octo-Final round.
Moreover, FDT Red blasted through all the elimination rounds and made it to the final round against Team China. They lost on a 4-1 split but still, we are so proud of this fantastic accomplishment. Congratulations to Jacqueline Belzberg, Allan Lee, Alison Lee, Jason Guo, and Grace Lee for their hard work and success!
A week ago FDT hosted our very first annual end of the year Gala. It was a wonderful evening full of games, moving speeches, and of course delicious food.
Seeing all of the generations of successful students present at the Gala truly demonstrated the longevity of FDT's goal and the strength of our mission.
We hope everybody enjoyed this fun-filled evening to cap off this year and from all of us at FDT, we look forward to another year full of success!
At our Gala, we announced our students of the year. The FDT staff spent hours looking at students in 3 categories: Novice, Junior, and Senior, to choose one student in each who best exemplified the virtues of success and hard work. The task was daunting, to say the least, but we are so happy to announce the winners of this award.
Our Novice Student of the Year is Cynthia Wang.
Our Junior Student of the Year is Eric Li.
And finally, our Senior Student of the Year is Allan Lee!
The Junior High Public Speaking National Championship took place over 4 days this past weekend at West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver. Our very own Vivian Gu placed as 2nd best speaker overall, which is all time record for FDT students at this competition. In addition, Katherine Feng placed in 7th overall and May Fan placed 13th overall.
The competition is comprised of 4 individual events and several of our students broke to the final rounds in these events. In particular, Vivian was crowned the debate champion and Katherine was named the impromptu speech champion. Moreover, Vivian placed 2nd in the persuasive category and May placed 3rd in the interpretative reading category.
Congratulations to our students for their hard work and effort in preparing for this tournament. Good job guys!