May 10, 2023 At 04:21 PM EDT
For two years in a row, the Potomac Oak debate team had to accept being the runners-up.
The team, based in Rockville, Maryland, had twice fallen short of the top prize at the International Public Policy Forum (IPPF) finals in New York City.
But this year, all of the late nights writing and rewriting essays and prepping for cross-examination finally paid off.
Potomac Oak beat The Hockaday School of Dallas to become the 2023 IPPF world champions last weekend. The victory also brought a $10,000 grand prize to be used for the debate program and for individual scholarships.
Evelyn Shue, a senior at Montgomery Blair High School, said this victory is the culmination of months of hard work researching, analyzing and writing about this year's topic, "Resolved: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an effective model for international cooperation."
"With all the amount of work we put into understanding the topic and synthesizing the things that we picked up from the internet, we were able to do our very best and showcase everything that we learned over the past month," she said. "I'm definitely grateful for it."
Coach Elisa Chen Sukhobok, the founder of the Potomac Debate Academy at Potomac Oak Tutoring, said this group of six students is experienced and "extremely motivated."
"I think that they took that experience that they gained from the last few years and were able to really leverage that," Chen Sukhobok said. "They knew the mission, and they [were] not nervous at all and [were] able to push through."
Chen Sukhobok, a lifelong debater, said that she was "painfully shy" as a kid. But debate changed her life by giving her an inner confidence. Now, she wants to give that gift to others.
"Our goal was really to not just win competitions but really to help kids get their own voices and help them develop confidence," she said. "We really wanted a safe space for kids to develop and know that it's OK to go for your own opinions and to have different opinions to other people."
Potomac Oak students range from competitive travel debaters to kids who just want to become better speakers. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Chen Sukhobok said 99 percent of the learning academy was from local high schools. But the expansion of remote instruction allowed Potomac Oak to serve students across the country and the world.
While only three students participated in the IPPF oral debate rounds, the entire team was involved in the research and writing portion of the contest.
Chen Sukhobok said there is "a lot of heavy lifting" that goes into researching evidence to support arguments. Each member of the IPPF team wants to be there and is passionate about the topics while understanding the long commitment and need to be a team player.
The team does a comprehensive literature review of the topics to break out of any echo chamber. This involves gathering information that details the full scope of the issue in order to set aside previous assumptions and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of evidence.
The speakers are then determined via a collaborative team effort. Chen Sukhobok said the team considered experience, who is less likely to be rattled under cross-examination and "who will most likely be a zealous advocate" for the issue.
A key tenant of the Potomac Oak philosophy is mentorship.
"We intentionally don't ever have an all-senior team," Chen Sukhobok said. "But I think it's really important to kind of pass down that institutional knowledge of, like, what the juniors this year learn and how can they give it back now to the rising juniors and sophomores."
While Shue did not participate in the oral debates, she had a larger role in the research, drafting and editing of speeches and essays for each round.
In her third year on the IPPF team, Shue took what she learned from older teammates, combined with her own experience, and passed that knowledge to the new IPPF debaters on the team.
Jonathan Fan is a junior at Montgomery Blair High School who participated in the IPPF for the first time this year.
While they have both been debating with Potomac Oak since middle school, they found advice from seasoned IPPF competitors on essays and argumentation extremely helpful.
"We could get valuable insight, whether it's how to act during a round, how to respond to judge questions or even how to write a case," Fan said.
IPPF is different from other debate competitions in many ways. Not only is it international, but it has a monthslong series of written debate rounds to narrow a pool of 64 teams down to eight for in-person oral debates in New York City. In those oral rounds, debaters face questions from a panel of expert judges.
Shue, who took a step back from competing this year, said preparing for the IPPF is a "refreshing" break from the public forum format because this competition focuses more on the overall narrative of the debate.
The final speeches from her team, she said, were "clear and tied together ideas" that flowed logically.
"It wasn't fast, it wasn't convoluted. It was very natural, and seeing that kind of growth makes me really proud as a teammate and a mentor," Shue said.
And the judges agreed.
John Sexton, a debate coach, former NYU president and co-founder of the IPPF, said Potomac Oak confidently debated a complex and nuanced topic.
Christina Phillips, a debate coach from Notre Dame High School of Sherman Oaks, California, and IPPF Advisory Board member, also praised the "spirited and well-balanced debate."
Now that they've won the grand prize, Potomac Oak is determined to continue building a legacy to ensure each IPPF team is "one that we could be proud of," Chen Sukhobok said.
"I think for us, it's not just like we want the championship. That's great. It's also like how can we keep this legacy going and how can we make sure that the younger kids are properly mentored," she said. "The biggest thing is that we have a team that tries their absolute best and they're gaining lifelong skills and really benefiting from this experience that they'll take with them throughout their life."
Fan and fellow Montgomery Blair High School junior Alexander Liu said they plan to compete at the IPPF next year.
"But we know very talented freshmen and sophomores this year, who will be very excited to try and get on board with this idea," Liu said. "So maybe instead of writing the bulk of the essays, we'll mostly be doing editing and guiding work. I think that's kind of the direction that most of us are heading to given that it'll be our last year in high school, so we want to get more people involved in the activity."
While Shue is heading off to college next year, she hopes she too can keep participating in the IPPF.
"I really want to help judge the written rounds for the next year as a college student [and] continue to help with the tournament as I get older," she said. "I'm looking forward to giving back to the debate community in any capacity as I gradually move through the rest of my education."
