Team England wins the WSDC 2016 – © Dominique Brewing

The English high school students Rosa Thomas, Archie Hall and Kenza Wilks won the grand final of the WSDC 2016 in Stuttgart as proposition on the motion „This house believes that states should be allowed to pay other states to relocate and settle refugees.“ The English team debated against the opposing Canadian team represented by Dasha Metropolitansky, Rory Flynn and Alex Wu. In the WSD format, teams consist of five students, three of which speak per debate. Therefore, Edward Bracey and Ife Grillo of Team England also became champions and Naz Gocek and Luciano Kwon of Team Canada also became vice champions. During and before the tournament, the teams were trained and accompanied by coaches – Team England was coached by Andrew Fitch and Lewis Iwu and Team Canada by Aislin Flynn.

Team Canada in the final – © Dominique Brewing

The grand final, which took place publicly in the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, was adjudicated by Rocio Abril (Argentina – Chair), Teck Wei Tan (Singapore), Lisa Schallenberg (Netherlands), Nick Salmon (Australia), Keana Reinu (Malaysia), Paidamwoyo Mangondo (South Africa), Branislav Fečko–Čegiň (Slovakia), Nicholas Cross (New Zealand) and Mehvesh Mumtaz Ahmed (Pakistan) and had an audience of about 600 viewers. A variety of regional officials attended as guests of honour.

More about the finalist teams can be read in interviews given by Naz Gocek and Kenza Wilks during the tournament, which we published in our Mittwochs-Feature.

The best speaker award for the preliminary rounds went to Eden Blair (Australia), the best ESL (English as a Second Language) speaker award to Kishen Sivabalan (Malaysia) and the best EFL (English as a Foreign Language) speaker award went to Clara Grønborg Juul (Denmark). The best ESL team was Pakistan, the best EFL team was Denmark. In addition to that, Rwanda won the award for the best newly participating nation and Florine Michelle Rombach (Switzerland) the award for best speaker from a newly participating nation.

The top speaker’s list is available online at tabroom.com.

An article with further information about the WSDC 2016 in Germany got published in advance of the event.

lok./jm.