South Lakes is hosting the Virginia High School League Liberty Conference tournament Saturday, Feb. 22nd.

Debaters will compete in public forum, Lincoln-Douglas, and policy events. This competition will decide who will participate in VHSL regionals.

South Lakes is sending three Lincoln-Douglas debaters, seniors Grace Erard and Nojan Hajiabbassi and junior Amar Singh, two public forum teams, seniors Anna Stormoen and Allyson Paiewonsky and sophomores Cyrus Crevits and Oliver Gainer, and two policy teams, sophomores Kiran Hampton and Henry Woelflein and freshmen Helena Clark and Daniel Sprague. These Seahawks were selected to represent the team based on their performance during the season.

As a result of this year’s conference realignment, Seahawks will compete against debaters from Fairfax, Langley, James Madison, McLean, Hayfield, Washington-Lee, and Yorktown.

“It’s a whole lot harder this year than it was last year,” senior Nojan Hajiabbassi said. “We’ve been redistricted with Washington Lee [High School], who are sort of our rivals.”

Debate coach Chery Finley hopes that the South Lakes competitors will build on their previous success, including their Lincoln-Douglas Debate Cup win at the Broad Run High School Spartan Invitational last month, at the conference tournament.

“The success has been great this year,” Finley said. “We’ve had a lot of younger students, newer competitors, so size-wize we’ve grown in term of numbers in competing, ninth graders through twelfth graders. Some tournaments are better than others, but on the whole we’ve got a really solid team and they have done well this year.”

Debate members are preparing for the competition tomorrow.

“Preparation is mostly researching the topic and writing cases,” Stormoen said. “We also run mock debates beforehand.”
Singh hopes that the preparation will pay off.

“I feel nervous going into districts,” Singh said. “I’ve prepared a lot, so I think I’ll do okay.”