Champions, Top Speaker at Johns Creek

The War Eagles had an incredibly successful weekend at the Johns Creek Gladiator Debates, one of the most competitive first semester invitational tournaments in Georgia. The champions in Varsity, Woodward cleared teams to the elimination rounds in all three divisions and won both the Varsity and Novice Top Speaker Awards.

In Varsity, senior Karthik Srinivasan and sophomore Sahil Patel paired up and posted an undefeated 5-0 record in the preliminary rounds with wins against Alpharetta (twice) and Chattahoochee (three times). Johns Creek uses a unique format for determining the elimination round matchups. Prior to the quarterfinals, the top eight teams gather for the Gladiator Challenge. The top seed after the preliminary rounds is given the right to challenge any of the other qualifying teams with the next highest seed doing the same until the four debates are paired. The top seed from Chattahoochee chose to challenge the second seed from Woodward, creating an unusual one-two matchup in the quarters. After a close debate, Karthik and Sahil emerged victorious on a 2-1 decision. Matched up against Chattahoochee again in the semifinals, the duo earned another 2-1 win to reach the final round. Competing for the coveted Gladiator helmet—one of the best traveling trophies in debate—Woodward defeated yet another team from Chattahoochee to earn the championship, this time on a unanimous 5-0 decision. After defeating two teams from Alpharetta in rounds one and two, Karthik and Sahil posted six consecutive wins over Chattahoochee to earn Woodward's first Johns Creek Championship. 

In addition to the Championship, Karthik earned the Top Speaker Award (which takes the form of a wooden Gladiator sword). 

The rest of the squad also had impressive showings. In Junior Varsity, sophomore Mia Gill paired up with Edward Xiao from Johns Creek to finish the preliminary rounds 5-1. Mia and Edward bowed out in the semifinals with Mia earning the Tenth Speaker Award.

In Novice, freshman Julia Khoury and sophomore Utkarsh Pandey cleared to elimination rounds after finishing the prelims with a 4-1 record. The duo was defeated by Johns Creek in the quarterfinals to finish tied for fifth. Freshmen Liliana Burgess and Pranay Vemulamada and sophomores Nikhil Mardhekar and Akshay Patel also posted winning (3-2) records in the preliminary rounds. Most impressively, Julia earned the Top Speaker Award in novice in only her second tournament. Akshay (6th) and Nikhil (14th) also earned individual speaker awards.