Rutgers debaters at the second annual University at Albany tournament celebrate making finals there once again. Left to right: Zach Sinkiewicz, Lin Lan, Nimit Jindal, Ali Ismail, Alex Jubb, Deepta Janardhan, Storey Clayton, Rachel Moon, Quinn Maingi, Nick Hansen, Russell Potter, Becky Ratero, and Chris Bergman.
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) broke three teams to quarterfinals at the University at Albany this weekend, with the dynamic duo of Rachel Moon and Nick Hansen running all the way to finals and an ultimate second-place finish. Meanwhile, Nimit Jindal and Ali Ismail broke to novice semifinals and won both out-rounds en route to a second-place novice-team finish.
Here are the myriad accomplishments notched by Rutgers at Albany’s second annual invitational:
Rachel Moon & Nick Hansen – 2nd Team
Russell Potter & Quinn Maingi – 5th Team
Deepta Janardhan & Alex Jubb – 7th Team
Russell Potter – Top Speaker
Quinn Maingi – 6th Speaker
Deepta Janardhan – 7th Speaker
Alex Jubb – 10th Speaker
Nimit Jindal & Ali Ismail – 2nd Novice Team [won novice finals]
Zach Sinkiewicz & Rose Cote [Syracuse] – 4th Novice Team
Nick Hansen – 4th Novice Speaker
Nimit Jindal – 6th Novice Speaker
Ali Ismail – 7th Novice Speaker
With the finals appearance, Moon qualified for Nationals for the first time in her career at RUDU after four previous semesters of competition. Partner Hansen now stands on 11 of the necessary 14 points toward qualification, where he is joined by a crowded field of Rutgers debaters nearing the mark. Arbi Llaveshi stands at 12.5, Henry Phipps at 11.25, and Janardhan bumped up to 11 with her quarterfinal appearance this weekend. Moon is the fifth Rutgers debater to qualify for Nationals this season and Rutgers is tied for sixth in the league with that mark. Top-ranked Yale leads the field with ten qualifications.
At American University this weekend, Sean Leonard and Phipps made partial octofinals and narrowly missed the chance to qualify Phipps with a win in that round.
Here are the Rutgers awards from American:
Sean Leonard & Henry Phipps – 11th Team
Sean Leonard – 7th Speaker
Jindal & Ali easily won both of their novice elimination rounds at Albany after compiling a 3-2 record in in-rounds that put them just 1.5 speaker points out of the varsity break. They beat Fordham on a 3-0 decision and Yale on a 4-1 in finals to win novice finals and finish only behind a Yale team that made the varsity break in the novice division. They both won speaker awards, putting Jindal on the Novice of the Year (NOTY) board for the first time, where he is now ranked 76th in the country.
Potter becomes the second top speaker in as many weekends for RUDU and the sixth Rutgers debater to earn that honor on the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) circuit. He now enters the Speaker of the Year (SOTY) rankings at 38th. He finished 49th in those standings last year.
Rutgers overall returns to the 5th ranking overall in the College of the Year (COTY) standings after a brief dip to 7th last week. With this being the best weekend in some time for RUDU, there’s optimism about further rises to come in the standings. RUDU will send teams to West Point and Stanford this weekend to try to qualify more debaters and further improve their rankings. There are six weeks left in the regular season before the National Championships at the University of Pennsylvania in late April.
