Team Sri Lanka at WSDC 2011

The World Schools Debating Championships 2011 were held in Dundee, Scotland, from the 16th to the 26th of August. This year marked Sri Lanka's 6th year participating officially at the Championships.

Selections for the team began in late January, and after a series of eight workshops and competitive debates, the following were selected to represent the country this year:

Sanjit Dias (Captain) - S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia
Tamara Fernando - Colombo International School
Manisha Dissanayake - Ladies' College
Raaliya Hussain - Methodist College
Lithmal Jayawardhana - Ananda College

The team was coached by Kithmina Hewage, a former member of the national team, and at present, an under-graduate at Johns Hopkins University.

The team did well to secure four wins out of the eight preliminary debates. The team overcame Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Peru, but were defeated by South Korea, USA, India and New Zealend, with the latter two being very close debates. Unfortunately, the team did not break into the knock-out rounds this year, but were ranked 23rd based on wins and losses, and 19th based on speaker points, out of the 48 teams which participated at the Championships.

The Championships were won by Singapore-the first ever Asian team to achieve this feat-who beat Australia 7-2 in the Grand Final, opposing the motion "This house believes that autocracy is doomed in the age of Facebook".

Special commendation goes out to Sanjit Dias, Tamara Fernando and Manisha Dissanayake, who were ranked 9th, 11th, and 14th respectively on the "English as a Second Language"(ESL) speaker tab.