2022 Winter Holidays Open
The Winter Holidays Open (WHO) took place toward the final weeks of December. This is an international tournament that is incredibly competitive for two key reasons. The first is the sheer quantity of debaters this tournament attracts, with this year’s edition featuring two separate divisions, created based on time zones! FDT teams participated in the second division, and it alone featured over 260 debaters! The second reason is because a lot of national teams treat WHO as their testing ground. This year for instance, we saw strong participation from the likes of Team Canada, Team Singapore, and Team China – just to name a few!
This tournament featured a double-octofinals break, meaning that twelve teams from each division would qualify to the prestigious elimination rounds! Of these teams, we wish to recognize Jeanette Pan for making it all the way to the semi-finals, where her team was unfortunately defeated by the eventual winners of the tournament. We are also immensely proud of the following students for their accomplishments:
Team Awards
Octofinalists
Jade Wang, Kennedy Kopke, Rachel Wei, Ziya Merchant, Leanna Liu, Emily Cui, Eric Li, Ann Wang, Meredith Wang, Jinjou Wang, Andy Yu, Leo Zhu, Summit Kawakami, Angela Lu, Jin Zhou
Quarterfinalists
Alice Xu, Barry Gu
Semifinalists
Jeanette Pan
Beginning from the crowning achievement this year, our very own Leo Zhu was ranked as the top speaker in his division – beating out the likes of Team Canada and other competitive national speakers! Well done, Leo! We also had some other incredible speaking accomplishments, such as the fact that one third of the top fifteen speakers come from the academy.
Speaker Awards
Champion Speaker – Leo Zhu
7th Speaker – Angela Lu
8th Speaker – Eric Li
11th Speaker – Andy Yu
15th Speaker – Summit Kawakami
29th Speaker – Barry Gu
30th Speaker – Jeanette Pan
36th Speaker – Jin Zhou
The next category to be discussed from WHO is the ESL Speakers Results, which recognizes the top speakers of the tournament for whom English is not their first language. FDT had two speakers in the top 20, out of more than 75 eligible speakers.
ESL Speaker Awards
7th Speaker – Emily Cui
19th Speaker – Ziya Merchant
The final category that we will recognize celebrates the accomplishments of the final speakers of each debate round – the reply speakers! This is a notoriously tricky speech, which grants you only half the normal speaking time, but forces you to consider and analyze content from the entire debate, usually spanning over fifty minutes!
Debate Reply Awards
3rd Speaker – Leo Zhu
9th Speaker – Ann Wang
Well done everyone, we are so incredibly proud of your accomplishments!
Burnaby Cup 2022
During the same week of our FDT Winter Invitational Tournament, FDT students also attended the Burnaby Cup, with some incredible successes!
To start off with the teams, Hannah Choi and Elizabeth Jen made it all the way to the Gold Finals, having won all four rounds of debate and ‘breaking’, or being announced to the finals, as first! At the Gold Finals, Hannah and Elizabeth finished as finalists! Congratulations to you two!
As for speaker results, we have a very impressive academy-wide performance, with three FDT speakers ranking in the Top 5! Additionally, in a tournament that had over 125 speakers, we wish to extend our congratulations to the following students for their successes at this tournament!
Speaker Results
Champion Speaker – Hannah Choi
3rd Speaker – Elizabeth Jen
5th Speaker – Eric Su
11th Speaker – Evangeline Lin
13th Speaker – Maya Adcock
17th Speaker – Isabel Liu
27th Speaker – Emma Sha
29th Speaker – Miranda Sun
Congratulations everyone for all these impressive placements!
FDT Winter Invitational 2022
On the 6th of December, FDT hosted the annual FDT Winter Invitational. This is an internal tournament that is mostly geared towards students who have not had much experience with other tournaments. It is an excellent opportunity to get involved in the competitive side of debate, and if you are interested in participating in such a tournament, stay tuned for updates in the new year!
Now, onto the results! There were a total of two rounds in this tournament, and it was split into three categories. The first, our high school category, encompassed students who were between grades 8 and 12. The top three teams were as follows.
HIgh School Team Awards
Champion Team
Claire Shen and Mia Xiao
2nd Place Team
Cherie Wang
3rd Place Team
Saachi Dhaliwal and Rojella Santos
Of these teams, we want to recognize Cherie Wang’s efforts, who managed to win both rounds, while iron-manning – meaning that she was debating by herself! Very impressive work!
High School Speaker Awards
Champion Speaker – Mia Xiao
2nd Speaker – Saachi Dhaliwal
3rd Speaker – Claire Shen
4th Speaker – Sophie Cao
5th Speaker – Cami Yu
7th Speaker – Sophie Phan and Cherie Wang (Tied)
Elementary Team Awards
Champion Team
Rhea Zhu & Parnav Kundi
2nd Place Team
Melody Zhang and Lucas Guo
3rd Place Team
Allen Ding and Rodeen Ramezanzadeh
Elementary Speaker Awards
Champion Speaker – Rhea Zhu
2nd Speaker – William Wong
3rd Speaker – Emma Wang
4th Speaker – Allen Ding and Melody Zhang (Tied)
6th Speaker – Amos Zhu
7th Speaker – Serina Fan
Novice Elementary Team Awards
Champion Team
Kingston Wang and Stephen Sheng
2nd Place Team
Emma Zhang and Angela Li
Novice Elementary Speaker Awards
Champion Speaker – Stephen Sheng
2nd Speaker – Megan Lam and Emerson Wang (Tied)
3rd Speaker – Kingston Wang
4th Speaker – Gloria Ma and Iris Duan (Tied)
5th Speaker – Angela Li
We wish to thank all of the judges that participated in this tournament for their hard work, all of the debaters for their bravery, and to celebrate everyone’s accomplishments here! Well done – this is an amazing first step to becoming a competitive debater!