Members of Palo Alto High School’s debate team are preparing for a tournament on Dec. 20 at College Prep School in Oakland after the team placed well in two debate tournaments this past weekend.

Junior Jujhaar Singh won the the Dempsey-Cronin Invitational for the second consecutive year at Santa Clara University Tournament on Dec. 14 in the varsity Lincoln Douglas (LD) Division.

Singh was surprised but excited about his win.

“I was expecting to do well, but winning the whole tournament definitely surpassed my expectations,” Singh said. “The competition was incredibly tough. My last opponent is one of the best debaters in the country. … It was an honor to even get a chance to debate her.”

The Paly debate coach, Jennie Savage, has much faith in Singh’s debating skills.

“There is no one better at persuading judges than Jujhaar Singh,” Savage said.

Another Paly debater, junior Avi Arfin, made the semifinal round of the tournament in the LD division. Juniors Shannee Braun and Naazneen Essabhoy also made it to the top 16 in the LD division.

Members of the debate team debate in either the policy or LD division. In policy debate, teams of two people debate about the same topic over the course of the entire school year. LD debate is individual and the topics of debate change every two months.

While Arfin and Singh debated in the SCU tournament, other Paly debaters competed in the Alta tournament in Sandy, Utah.

According to Savage, many, more technical debaters on the Paly debate team attended the Alta Silver and Black tournament, as it was more focused on technical debate than the SCU tournament.

Savage describes technical debate as more detail-oriented than persuasive debate.

“In technical debate, you pour over documents looking for mistakes, a semicolon misplaced,” Savage said.

Junior Nate Munger and sophomore Chloe Chen debated as a team at the Alta tournament and cleared to elimination rounds along with the rest of the top 21 teams in the policy division.

Savage estimates that 11 or 12 debaters from the Paly team will be attending a national, LD-only tournament in Oakland this weekend. The Paly debate team won this tournament last year.

Savage anticipates good results at the upcoming tournament.

“I’m expecting to do well,” Savage said. “They just got a new topic, so the kids haven’t had much time to write their cases because they’ve been debating other things. I’m sure they can pull it together.”