On 15-17 December last a team of College students participated in the debating competition Winter Holidays Open in Zagreb, Croatia.
96 teams participated from around 20 countries, with 350 debaters and 100 adjudicators. The competition is an international World Schools tournament for high school students that has been organized for the past 5 years. This year the winning team gets to participate in the World Schools Debating Championships to be held in Zagreb in July 2018.
The Debate Club in UWC Adriatic is a relatively new initiative since it has been up and running for two years only. This is the first time the team has participated in any kind of competition – be it on a national or international level. The UWCAD team consisted of 3 people: Sirena Harrop (Hong Kong, 2016-18), Seda Radoykova (Bulgaria, 2017-19) and Alexa Dvorska (Slovakia, 2016-18); Sarune Andre Steikunaite (Lithuania, 2016-18), on the other hand, was and adjudicator in the competition.
To their great joy they ended up 15th in the overall score and participated in the octofinals. Sirena’s achievements are quite exceptional since she was nominated the best speaker in the competition (out of 350 people!). Seda’s performance was equally impressive as she was the 11th best speaker in the competition as well!
“All in all”, says Sarune, “it was incredibly exciting to participate in a big competition on an international level and I couldn’t be more proud or happy about the achievements of our team members.”
