The third year of Kudos High School Congress kicked off with a bang as our students competed at three different tournaments throughout the month of September. The grind towards the mountain top of success starts by working hard right from the start, and these students showed that mentality by kicking off competition on September 9th, before some other debate programs even held their first official practice.

It started with the Season Opener, hosted by the University of Kentucky. Kudos sent five students and all five were in the top 25 for cumulative ranks out of over 80 entries. Three students from each of the eight chambers broke into semifinals, and we had four of our students advance into semis. Junior Claire Wen and Freshman Audrey Huang not only were the top students in their prelim chamber, but the top two students overall coming out of prelims. Junior Zach Chang and Sophomore Evelyn Lam were the top #2 seeds in the tournaments, having the sixth and eight best cumes respectively. Sophomore Serena Guo actually had the 25th best cume and would have broken if not for being put into a hyper-competitive preliminary chamber. Our upperclassmen, Zach and Claire both advanced from the semi-final to the final and each picked up their first bid to the Tournament of Champions.

Fiona Zhao was the only student from the entire state of California to make the trek out to the East Coast and compete at Yale, which is the 2nd most prestigious tournament in the country for congress, right behind Harvard. She was ranked in the top eight by six of her seven judges, including a 1st place rank from the parliamentarian. Not only is the parli’s ballot the most important because they are usually the most experienced judge, and see the competitors in all prelims rather than in just one round. But Fiona got the 1 from former Congress National Champion, Parker De Deker! Fiona also picked up her first TOC bid this year.

Great Job Kudos!