Keoni Scott-Reid High School Debater of the Year:  Sitara Mazumdar, BASIS DC

If you are looking for a young person who embodies the spirit of a “good” debater, look no further than Keoni Scott-Reid. He was one of the first WUDL debaters, and holds most of the “firsts” in the league record book, winning every award available at the time. Beyond the trophies, he was a leader in the community, an innovative scholar, and an inspirational coach. He tragically passed away in 2019, and we’ve re-named this award in his memory.

Sitara Mazumdar is this year’s winner, showing leading exemplifying  Keoni’s combination of competitive excellence, leadership and volunteerism, scholarship, and character. 

Sitara has earned 3 bids to the ToC and enough awards to apparently cause storage problems at home across regional and local tournaments. Consistently one of the best individual speakers in every tournament, Sitara has won more regional speaker awards than anyone else, and is tied for the record for best individual speaker in league history. We have many exceedingly talented competitors, however, and what pushed her over the edge this year is her volunteerism and leadership in the community. Sitara hasn’t missed a tournament in years, even when her partner can’t attend, often stepping in as coach for their squad (including at Regionals last weekend). She seamlessly slides between judge and competitor, providing thoughtful ballots and eagerly volunteers to lead workshops for younger debaters. 

This year, we lured her on stage to hand off the Sweepstakes Award that her team had won 3 years running, but surprised her with an award of her own before she caried out the passing of that torch. 

Like Keoni, Sitara has a future as a gifted coach after their competitive days are done. 

Middle School Debater of the Year: Karamoko Kourouma, Kettering Middle School

This year, WUDL instituted a new category of awards for folks to win — the Leadership Awards for who has been leading their team effectively between tournaments, as well as at the competitions themselves. Coach Bush nominated Karamoko almost every tournament, highlight everything from helping with administrative tasks and mentoring less experienced debaters to making sure the room wasn’t a mess after practice. 

Oh yea…and he won a lot of awards too, crushing the Rookie division and advancing to being a regular award winner in Novice this year too. He’ll be ready for JV and the next challenge next season, and Kettering is much richer for his leadership. 

New Debater of the Year: Marcus Gwynn, Forest Park High School

Marcus started the season competing at a regional tournament, holding his own against students who’d been to debate camp while he’d had about 4 weeks of practice. He entered his first tournament locally, and went undefeated, winning top speaker. This pattern continued, and he was promoted to JV…where he promptly won top speaker again and went undefeated. 

While the JV division began to catch up to him and learned some of his tricks, he was wire to wire one of the most exciting and thoughtful new competitors in the league. In numerous conversations, he was thoughtful and reflective, always looking for an actionable way to improve from the feedback he got, willing to speak up when he needed to, and even keeled when things didn’t go his way. We look forward to him in Varsity this Fall.