Thursday, January 26, 2012

WSDC 2012: Scotland Wins Fourth Crown

Scotland (Alfie Hinchliffe, Charlie Thomas, Ruth Cameron) triumphed in the final debate of the 2012 World Schools Debating Championships, giving their nation its fourth trophy from the most prestigious high school debating event on the planet. Although Scotland championed WSDC in 1990, 1999 and 2007, middling performance during preliminaries in recent years pushed the country into the C group with a rank of #15. That is likely to change after it only lost once in the 2012 prelims.

In today's final, Scotland from opposition bench crushed Wales (Amy Jones, David Wigley, Piers Digby) in a debate that had the motion "This House regrets South Africa's decision to use the Truth and Reconciliation Commission rather the prosecuting the perpetrators of crimes committed under Apartheid". Eight judges went for the Scots while one dissented. It was Wales' first appearance in a WSDC final. WSDC uses a 3-on-3 format but each team can have up to 5 members for rotation purposes and all team members can help build the cases. Scotland's alternates were April Shepherd and Josh Richards while Wales had only one, Helen Price.

Indonesia collected 4 wins and 13 judges to place #25 on the final tab, besting last year's result and matching the achievements in 2006 and 2007. Since its first participation in 2001, Indonesia has broken twice into elimination stage of WSDC, in 2003 and 2004. The 2013 edition will take place in Turkey. Thailand won the bid to host the tournament in 2014.

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