I wanted to blog everyday during the tournament, but as luck would have it, there was just not enough time to log on at the end of the long days of competition. The Philippine Military Academy put together what could easily be the best competition the local debate community has seen in terms of logistics. My contingent, UP Manila, sent seven teams of two and five adjudicators.
After seven rounds of debates on topics ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and issues concerning the military, the top 32 teams earned the right to advance to the break rounds. In line with past regulations and to make sure that no institution has a monopoly on the break rounds, a breaking cap of four teams was again observed. This means that only the only the top four teams of each institution could advance to the playoffs phase.
UP Diliman A was NDC’07’s top breaking team with 19 points. They edged out Ateneo de Manila A who finished with 18 points.
UP Manila A broke at 13th spot with 14 points out of a possible 21. UP Manila B (my team) managed to collect 13 points. UP Manila E and UP Manila D were not far behind with similar 13 point-cards. UP Manila C finished with 12 points - a score that was good enough to get to the break rounds, but since there were already four UP Manila teams advancing, team C was capped.
UPM F finished with 11 points. UPM G - a team composed of new members — garnered a total of 10 points and accumulated a considerable amount of experience.
Result of the break rounds
Quarterfinalists
UPM B - James Salisi + Benj Espina
Octofinalists
UPM A - Patricia Factor + Michael Chan
UPM D - Justin Rivera + Aya Bautista
UPM E - Alvina Antonio + Robert Totanes
Public Speaking Finalists:
Robert Totanes + Benj Espina
Top Adjudicators
Aloysius Domingo, M.D. and Adrian Paul Rabe, M.D.
I’ll post the debate topics in the coming days. 
Sorry for not blogging for more than a week.
Related Articles:
On Cdt. Absalon - by Celeni. She’s responsible for sending yours truly and the eventual champion to the Public Speaking Finals.
Cadet turns lost chance at love into winning speech - The Philippine Daily Inquirer article that made it to the front page!
Bookmark at:
StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Dzone | Newsvine | Spurl | Simpy | Furl | Reddit | Yahoo! MyWeb
Viewed 2838 times by 1281 viewers
and the adjes??? hahaha. dynamite fishing.
hi!
interesting blog you have here… i used to debate for UP Manila during my college days… i eventually crossed over to the UST Debate Team when i did medicine there… i must say i’ve had a lot of fond memories debating with both UPM and UST– asians, australasians, local tourneys… it’s great to see that the proud tradition of excellent debating at UPM still continues… memories surfaced for me & i searched for information regarding how debate was at UPM when i started my masteral degree program at UPM…
good luck!