VDA 2024: A Year of Excellence in Debate and Community

2024 was another incredible year at the Vancouver Debate Academy, with thousand of students building friendships, growing in confidence, and finding their voice through debate. Whether in the classroom or on the stage, VDA’s outstanding team of coaches and debaters worked together to make 2024 a year to remember. 

On the competitive front, VDA attended 31 major tournaments including many of the world’s most prestigious and challenging, and dozens of students brought home over 100 team and individual awards. Leading the way were four team championships at Harvard, Georgetown, UBC, and the Harvard Debate Council’s International Tournament, as well as two top speaker awards at Harvard and Harvard International. The VDA team also won 10 silver and bronze medals at these tournaments, and added a second place finish at Stanford University to its accomplishments. As a credit to the diverse talents of the VDA coaching team, VDA students won top awards in all major formats in 2024, with a bevy of trophies in British Parliamentary, World Schools, and Public Forum debate. 

Fundamental to our success were the countless hours VDA students spent together in the classroom learning argument structures, developing critical thinking skills, and polishing their public speaking abilities, all while debating a variety of fun topics from economic development and democratization to psychology and even folklore! Hundreds of VDA students attended our in-house tournaments this year to test what they learned, and our recent Holiday Spectacular developed into our largest intersquad debate ever! At the event, over 225 VDA debaters came out to debate and judge some of our best rounds of the year, and over 100 students won awards for their hard work in 2024.

Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t offer our deepest thanks to the hundreds of parents, grandparents, and family members who supported our debaters in 2024. Your commitment driving teams to practice and tournaments, helping rehearse speeches and arguments, and even judging rounds make every step of growth possible. So as we step into the new year, know that your hard work is seen and profoundly appreciated. Thank you VDA families and all members of our VDA community! 

While 2024 set a new standard for VDA success, we’re ready to face new challenges and exceed our goals in the coming year. Our students and coaches are already hard at work preparing for our first tournaments of 2025, including Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Western University, and we’d love for you to join as well. Thank you again for an extraordinary 2024 and we’ll see you in 2025! Happy new year!