ACS Excellence Continues in Debate

By Scott Bleiweis, former ACS Debate Team coach

Students from the American College of Sofia’s English language speech and debate club continued their streak of brilliant performances at a recent tournament organized by the BEST Foundation. On March 5-6, 2016 at the Simeon Radev Foreign Language High School in Pernik, American College of Sofia won first place in the team competition for schools with 11 or fewer participants.

Over 155 students from 13 high schools in Bulgaria participated in this tournament, which featured English-language competitions in five events: prose, poetry, and duo interpretation; original oratory; and World Schools-format debates. In the novice prose contest for students in 8th and 9th grades, ACS student Ana-Maria Markovska earned the first place prize for her performance of “A page from an Amish girl’s diary” by Michelle Sandoval. ACS has two additional finalists in this category, with Gabriela Ivanova finishing 3rd and Kristiya Navushtanova taking 5th place. Boyana Atanasova earned 3rd place in the original oratory contest for students from grades 8-12.

ACS continued its dominance in the debate event, taking first, second, and fourth place. The team of Stoyan Trenchev, Kamen Velichkov, and Simeon Mihaylov won the debate contest, with fellow ACS students Lyubomir Donchev, Iva Valcheva, and Rada Pavlova finishing second. The team of Gabriela Ivanova, Kristiya Navushtanova, and Boyana Atanasova reached the semifinal round and earned fourth place. In addition to their victory, Stoyan, Kamen and Simeon were honored with the Sportsmanship Award for the tournament.

Members of the ACS speech and debate club will compete in the duo and oratory events at a special tournament on March 26-27 at the American University of Bulgaria in Blagoevgrad. Winners will represent Bulgaria at a national speech tournament in the United States in June. Additionally, ACS is well positioned to build on its brilliant performances in Pernik at BEST’s year-end national speech and debate competition, to be held April 22-24 in Sofia.