2025 NSDA National Middle School

Last week, Vancouver Debate Academy travelled two teams all the way to Des Moines, Iowa to compete in the NSDA Middle School National Tournament of 2025. Our students fought hard against 65 teams from around the world and we are SO excited to share our results! 

Starting with speaker awards, EVERY single student from VDA placed in the top 25% of speakers at the tournament! 

For our first team, Evan Guo received 29th speaker and his partner Luella Zhang received 28th speaker! And, for our second team, Angela Zang received 23rd speaker (placing her in the top 20%)  and Miranda Le placed an impressive 18th place in speaker awards, which puts her in the top 15% of speakers at the tournament! FANTASTIC work team! Our tireless work on adapting our files and practicing our speeches has paid off! 

Now, for the competition results. One team powered through 6 prelims to advance to eliminations. With a winning record of 4-2, Angela Zang and Miranda Le made it all the way to Octafinals, after defeating their opponents in the Partial-Octafinals. A big congratulations to Angela and Miranda for making it to the top 16! This puts them in the top 25% of competitors at the tournament! 

I am so wildly impressed with these girls! After joining our team, we worked tirelessly over the last several weeks to get ready for competition. From editing cases, to practice debates, to in-depth research- we did what it takes together. I am beyond proud of what these two were able to accomplish! Congratulations, Miranda and Angela! 

Overall, everyone on the VDA Competitive PF team contributed to preparing students for competition. We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful and supportive team with students willing to work hard and help their teammates, even if they don’t personally benefit. A special thank you to the entire team for helping to lift each other up and being there for one another. Both of our teams were successful because of the effort we put in as a team, and we should all be very proud of what we accomplished. 

Excellent work, VDA Family. See you at camp!