The Tournament of Champions (TOC) is an annual nationwide debate tournament where the best debaters of the country compete against each other to solidify their place as the best debate programs of the country. Held in Lexington, Kentucky in April, it is the most difficult tournament of the year with very high qualification requirements; only Ed teams of 2 make the tournament each year. In order to qualify for the tournament, pairs of  debaters must acquire two “TOC bids” by reaching certain elimination rounds at specific tournaments.

Mamaroneck Debate has had a history with the tournament, qualifying every year since 2020. Mamaroneck has always been considered an outstanding debate team in the country, “being consistently a top 10 debate program in the country and qualifying more teams than most prestigious private schools,” according to debate coach and MHS math teacher Jake Lee.

He notes, “The best Mamaroneck has ever done [in the tournament] was 3rd place in 2022,” the first year Lee has worked with the team. This year, hopes are even higher for our highly accomplished debate team, as three Mamaroneck teams, Sanjana Tata and Gabby Miller, Andreas Charalamabous and Leo Federspiel, and Felix Alpfaltrer and Sahil Gupta, have solidified their place in the tournament so far and two more are on the verge of qualifying.

With such high prestige, the road to the tournament has not been an easy journey. Mamaroneck debate has put in a painstaking effort to reach the tournament. Leo Federspiel (’26) explains that Mamaroneck Debate has “traveled all across the country, from Minneapolis to Atlanta” to secure bids for the tournament. Furthermore, Gabby Miller (’25) notes that some debaters even go to a seven-week debate summer camp “to research the topic and get practice debating the topic against debaters from other schools.”

Additionally, the team has put in endless hours of hard work and faced numerous challenges when preparing for this year’s topic itself: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Laws.

According to Sahil Gupta (’26), “Nobody on the team was well versed in the legally dense topic,” so the team has “researched, spending hundreds of hours on google scholar and the internet looking for just the right article, driven by the pursuit of success.” Not to mention, Lee has “consulted with top lawyers, legal professors, experts,” and more since May of 2024 to prepare for the topic.

Lee’s commitment to debate began over ten years ago while competing as a policy debater himself in high school and college. He has high regard for debate as it can help people “learn more about the world, become a better speaker, a better critical thinker, and a better researcher.”

Though he admits that he was not a good debater in high school, he uses this as motivation for coaching debate: “to make sure every debater [he coaches] is a better debater than [he] was.”

Debate has played an important role in many of the debaters’ lives, and the impact it has on them is anything but small. Federspiel believes that debate has been “a site of personal growth by giving [him] the confidence to speak in front of so many.” Gupta further explains that debate has become an integral part of many debaters’ identities in high school, as it “allowed [debaters] to grow and manage [their] time and resources better, helped [them] establish closer relationships with those in and out of debate, and simply have a good time.

As the tournament nears, debaters can’t seem to contain their excitement. Gupta admits that he “could literally talk for hours about every single thing” he plans to do. Moreover, Miller expresses that she is excited to “reunite with [her] friends from [debate] camp,” whom she has not seen in a while, and “celebrate [the] team’s success.”

Despite her excitement, as a senior, Miller confesses that “ending [her] debate career at the Tournament of Champions will be bittersweet” due to it being “a reflection of [her] dedication.”

Alternatively, Federspiel notes that his main goal is to reach the elimination bracket, as “only a fraction of attendants reach that far.” And this “has only happened once in all of Mamaroneck debate history.”

With all the hard work and time spent in preparation coming to an end, let’s wish the debaters Mr. Lee luck during their debates at the Tournament of Champions!