Last year’s win was unbelievable. Without coaching, organization, or outside help, Alexandria’s Harlow Babic and Andrew Bell won the Virginia High School League’s debate state championship.
This year, after spending hundreds of hours building arguments, the defending state champs from Alexandria City High School were gearing up for two wins in a row. Their hopes were dashed three days before the April 26 tournament at James Madison University when told that they missed the registration deadline and couldn’t participate.
Babic and Bell are an effective verbal dancing team, complementing their arguments without stepping on each other’s toes. The team captains of the high school’s debate team won without teacher support, and told ALXnow that the team has had five debate coaches in three years.
“All the other schools filled out the paperwork,” Babic said. “It’s kind of crazy.”
“It was so infuriating,” Bell said.
Babic and Bell’s season isn’t quite over. Next month, the pair head to The National Catholic Forensic League Grand National Tournament in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend.
Alexandria City Public Schools says that there was a “breakdown in internal processes” that led to the situation. Debate is considered a sport and its organization falls under the purview of ACHS Athletics Director James Parker. The actual debate coach, an ACPS teacher, was apparently out of the country during spring break and was unavailable to register the kids for the event.
The school system now says it will contribute $2,000 for their trip to Chicago next month.
According to ACPS:
Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) acknowledges a breakdown in internal processes that resulted in members of the debate team missing the opportunity to compete at the Virginia High School League (VHSL) State Championship. While registration for prior competitions was completed, the States registration deadline was during Spring Break, which is a time when key staff were unavailable. Due to cybersecurity concerns, staff do not have access to emails and ACPS devices while on international travel, which we understand was the case in this instance. This caused a further delay in responses. We take shared responsibility and are reviewing our procedures to ensure stronger support for students moving forward. We have met with the students affected, apologized to them and provided an opportunity for them to share their feedback. ACPS is contributing $2,000 toward the team’s trip to Nationals and is promoting fundraising efforts to assist the team with going on the trip. We remain proud of our students’ achievements and are committed to helping them succeed.
Bell’s mother, Karen Bell, said that the team was disappointed.
“I think they’re heartbroken,” she said. “How many other teams have ever won a state championship two years in a row? They both found something that they’re really good at, and they worked hard at it with no support from the school. They had a chance to accomplish something really cool, and they just didn’t even get the opportunity to participate.”
Babic plans to attend the Georgia Institute of Technology and Bell will head to the University of Virginia this fall.
Calls to VHSL were not returned by ALXnow’s deadline.
ALXnow: What did it take for you to win the VHSL state debate tournament last year?
Babic: God, countless hours. Last year we didn’t have a debate coach, so we were basically working out of the closet of the orchestra room, which we are actually in right now.
Bell: Yeah, especially because we didn’t have a teacher a lot of our learning was just off of YouTube videos online and Google searching, which is not very efficient, and it’s just a lot of trial and error… It’s just hundreds of hours of research.
ALXnow: What was the topic?
Bell: Last year’s topic was, should the United States federal government substantially increase fiscal redistribution to obtain a federal job guarantee, increase social security or create a UBI, which is universal basic income?
Babic: Basically, you argue both for and against the resolution in a specific way and you argue the resolution for the entire year.
ALXnow: When did you join the team?
Bell: I tried to join my sophomore year, but the coach got fired. So then we tried again our junior year, but the new coach didn’t really come to any of the meetings for the first two months. The both of us really started in November of last year.
ALXnow: The coach got fired?
Babic: The first coach was fired from being a debate coach for a reason we don’t 100% know, so I’m not gonna speculate. The second coach left because of a personal reason. The third coach, which we had beginning of last year, he got fired, and then the speech coach stepped in as a stand-in for like two tournaments. Then his daughter graduated, so that’s why he stepped down, and then now we have the fifth coach.
ALXnow: Is the VHSL state tournament the world series for you? Is your season over after that competition?
Babic: We compete in two different leagues. We compete in a national league and we compete in a state league. The state tournament is basically the most important tournament of the year for us, because it is the one that we can realistically win. The other one is like a national tournament, and we have to travel out of state to go to.
ALXnow: What was it like to win against other teams that were funded and organized?
Bell: Absolutely amazing.
Babic: We worked like all day the weekend before, and we were just hoping for, like, third place. So it was like, literally, it is astounding to us. When we won first was like, incredible.
ALXnow: Now we get to this school year. How was the rest of the season going aside from this?
Babic: We have a 90% win rate, so generally we’ve been doing very well.
Bell: Very strong. We won the first tournament we competed in, and we qualified for Metro-Finals, which is the state-level competition for the other league they participate in, the qualifier for national tournaments, and then we won that. So, we are going to Chicago, and we place top third in all the other tournaments that we competed in.
ALXnow: What’s this year’s topic?
Bell: The topic this year is the United States federal government should significantly strengthen domestic intellectual property laws through the strengthening of patent laws, trademark laws and copyright laws.
ALXnow: How did you prepare this year? Have you devised a system by this point?
Bell: The same process of over 100 hours of research, and then testing those arguments at tournaments, seeing what works, seeing what does not work, trying to fill in any holes or gaps with your arguments, or if you just think arguments are not viable.
ALXnow: What happened with this year’s state tournament?
Babic: (To Bell) You want to do it, or do you want me to do it?
Bell: It’s a little difficult for us, because VHSL never responded directly to any of our emails. The first time we actually spoke to any school administrators about this was today, like two hours ago, when they called us into their office. All of our information is coming through another party, but at least my understanding of it is that in order for us to be registered with this tournament, a few things had to happen. We had to qualify via placing in a Ruper-Regional level tournament, which, of course, we won. And then our coach had to sign us up through Tabroom, which is the online portal, and we did that, and we have a student access to that portal, so we can see that (the teacher) did that. But the third thing that had to happen was she had to send in paperwork, and we are not aware that she had to do that. There’s no way for us to verify whether or not she did that, and that was never done. We were supposed to compete last Friday and Saturday, and on Tuesday, we were notified that, because that paperwork was never turned in, we were dropped from the tournament and eligible to compete.
ALXnow: What goes through your minds in this situation? How did you feel?
Bell: It was so infuriating.
Babic: I’m sure you can ascertain that we’ve had a rough two years in terms of management. So, it’s a little like disheartening when it’s like the most important tournament of the year, and it seems like nobody is is doing the things that are necessary for us to go except for us.
Bell: It’s been a few years since our school has won a state level VHSL events, and they don’t bother to fill out the paperwork? Yeah, that’s what’s going through my mind. Like, how did this happen? I could not imagine this happening with any of the other schools.
Babic: All the other schools filled out the paperwork. It’s kind of crazy. We’ve had administrative issues, like we’ve basically been been teaching the debate team this entire year, and we’ve been struggling with these administrative things.
ALXnow: But your season isn’t over until May. How do you feel about the national tournament in Chicago?
Bell: Well, we’re going to try our hearts out now that we aren’t going to have this tournament. We’re going to do our best. That tournament is five days, with five rounds in the first day, and if you achieve a certain threshold of wins, you get to move on to the second day. So, our goal is just to move on to the second day.
