Arguing Over Salaries for College Athletes Pays for Barlow Debate

No money or scholarships were on offer, but the students won plenty of glory this past Saturday at Fairfield Warde High School. Issues of justice, monopoly, free will, academic integrity, and economics came to the fore as over two hundred students from across the state converged to debate the merits of paying college athletes. This was the fourth CDA event of the season, and as they have at every tournament this year, Joel Barlow students took a fourth of the trophies on offer along with several top-ten finishes.

Juniors Nicolo Marzaro and Brendan Coppinger were the highest scoring varsity pair from Barlow. Their combined 164 speaker points was equal to the second-place pair, a tie broken only by ranks. Marzaro's 85 points earned him the second-place varsity speaker trophy. He and the first-place speaker were actually matched for points, with the tie broken by a discrepancy of 2 points for their opposition. Readers may recall how last season as novices, this extraordinary pair went undefeated in the regular season and how they took first place in their first varsity tournament this past October at Stamford's AITE.

Another pair of Barlow varsity debaters were undefeated. Seniors Henry Knight and Emma Tower finished in fourth place, just two points behind Coppinger and Marzaro. In the third round, Tower even managed to outpoint Knight, the reigning state champion speaker. She will now join the roster of fourteen Barlow students heading to state finals in the end of March, matching the previous team record set in 2009.

Once again, Barlow speakers were well represented among the best varsity speakers. Three of the top ten were from Barlow including Marzaro, Knight and Lewson with Tower and Cummiskey among the top twenty. With one exception, the rest of the varsity roster turned in solid 2-1 performances including seniors Vance Hancock, juniors Cormac Cummiskey, Cooper D'Agostino, Ben Lewson, Stephen Tschudi and sophomore Brendan O'Connor. Speedy seniors David Kang and Matt DiPalma were only 1-2, trying to cram in more arguments than judges could comprehend.

Like the varsity, Barlow freshmen are beginning to crowd out the competition in the novice division with three speakers finishing among the best seven. Freshman Hunter Lightman earned the third-place novice speaker medal, his second honor of the year. For the second tournament in a row, he and freshman Brooke Curto went 2-1, and so did freshmen Harrison vonDwingelo and Will Tower. VonDwingelo tied Lightman's 85 points with Tower only one point behind. Owing to tie breakers, the former finished fifth and the latter in seventh place. It was a big day for the Towers, with both Emma and Will each posting their best finish to date.

Freshmen Sam Aldershof and Peter Gombos took a win from Staples in round one, while sophomore Carl Goldstein tried his best, paired with a girl from Ridgefield.

Barlow debate has a busy January with tournaments at Loomis-Chaffee and Kingswood-Oxford coming up on the fifteenth and the twenty-ninth respectively.