The debate team competed at the 54th annual Texas Forensic Association (TFA) State Tournament in Frisco from March 12-14. Twenty of the 23 state qualifiers attended the tournament, competing across seven speech and debate events.
TFA State is considered the largest and most competitive state championship debate tournament in the country, with over 1,500 students from 180 Texas schools participating.
The team competed in Public Forum (PF), Lincoln Douglas (LD), Congressional Debate, Policy Debate (CX), Informative Speaking, Foreign Extemporaneous Speaking and Duo Interpretation.
“TFA State is extremely hard because some of the most competitive teams in the country are located in Texas,” junior and Public Forum debater Ayub Ahmed said. “It was functionally a national level tournament in terms of difficulty.”
Despite the difficulty in competition, debate coach and AP Research teacher Isaac Chao calls this year’s tournament “something all the competitors should be proud of.”
“All students worked exceptionally hard to prepare for this tournament,” Chao said. “They meaningfully sacrificed their time and their spring break, and I think that every student who participated accomplished something that they should give themselves credit for. It is the case that we had students who advanced in their various events, and we were certainly happy to support them as they went through that process.”
This year’s state tournament marked the first time juniors Ayush Khadse and Aashrith Korampally advanced past the preliminary rounds for PF. They advanced to the octo-final round, placing them in the top 13 PF teams in the state.
“I didn’t expect to do as well as we did,” Korampally said. “I honestly went to state to travel and have fun. But my partner and I prepped out one specific niche in the topic, which after realizing that no one was prepping us out on that niche, was a lot easier to do well in rounds. Overall, we got to interact with a lot of new arguments and make a lot of new friends.”
Junior Leo Cheng won a speaker award, placing 10th amongst all 168 PF competitors. This was his first year competing at the tournament with Ahmed and his second year advancing in the event.
“Leo very much deserves it,” Ahmed said. “We read a lot of procedural arguments to ensure that we got high speaker points. We also got pretty good judge feedback as to how we were speaking and the content of our arguments and our speeches. Seeing Leo on the stage getting his award made me really happy, and we were all cheering super loudly when he was recognized.”
Ten students qualified for TFA State in Public Forum this year, one of the largest numbers of PF qualifiers in the team’s history. During former debate coach Jay Stubbs’ time on the team, Congressional Debate tended to have the most team qualifiers.
“The growth of PF was mainly due to a shift in our coaching expertise, because back when we had Mr. Stubbs, we obviously had a lot more Congressional Debate experience,” Korampally said. “Mr. Chao’s specialty is in Policy Debate and Lincoln Douglas, so we’ve had a bit of a shift in progressive arguments for the debate formats. I’m proud of where we have come in PF, and we have a lot of freshmen talent this year to continue that growth.”
TFA State was the first travel tournament for the team in 2026. Although 11 out of the 19 students indicated that they were “not satisfied with their performance,” most were “happy” that they got to travel after the previous travel tournament to Emory University got canceled in January due to a winter storm.
“Being able to travel with the team to tournaments is one of my favorite parts of the activity,” Korampally said. “It makes the team have a more inclusive culture. Not getting to experience the Emory tournament in person was really disappointing, but being able to spend time with my teammates, support each other and stay up late nights prepping at state was really fun.”
Though there are still five postseason tournaments remaining for the debate team, for 12 of the state competitors, state marks their last tournament of the season. For senior and Congressional Debater Jason Chen, TFA State was the last tournament of his seven-year speech and debate career.
“I’ve had a lot of memories on this team,” Chen said. “I can almost remember what happened at every tournament, both the good and the bad. I’ll definitely miss the experience of talking to debaters before rounds, hurriedly prepping, fretting over results and all that. Debate has always been a little tumultuous relationship with me, but I’m really happy that I’m ending it at this stage.”
Chen competed in Congressional Debate along with seniors Alia Hassan and Samantha Tran and freshman Laila Hassan. This tournament marked the first time in over five years that three students advanced past the preliminary rounds at state, with Tran advancing to finals and Alia Hassan and Chen advancing to semifinals.
“After four years of constant effort in Congressional Debate, coming close, and pushing through unexpected setbacks, finally breaking into finals meant everything to me,” Tran said. “TFA State is a completely different arena compared to other circuits because of the judging, which makes it an especially difficult beast to confront. I’m forever grateful that I was able to accomplish the goal my younger self once dreamed of.”
While state is not the final tournament for senior and Informative Speaking competitor Eliza Teo, it marked a competitive milestone for her.
“Although it would have been nice to get to the semifinals, I was pretty satisfied with my performance, as I was able to fully support my teammates and also meet a plethora of new people,” Teo said. “I was able to fully go out and put myself out there on all days of my competition, and that allowed me to leave no regrets behind because of all the laughs I shared with people.”
Despite graduating 10 experienced seniors, Chao believes that much underclassmen talent has been cultivated because of them.
“State this year represented a period of transition for the debate team,” Chao said. “The older competitors who grew up in the program under another coach, who stayed through the transition, had an important role to play in crafting what the current version of this team looks like. They will be dearly missed. Some of that expertise is going to be extremely challenging to replace, but the fact that we had so many younger students qualify is evidence of their leadership and of the job that they’ve done in cultivating a new generation of competitors.”
Final Places:
Informative Speaking: 94 entries
Ishani Kaushik (9), Eliza Teo (36)
International Extemp: 81 entries
Alia Hassan (14)
Public Forum: 84 entries
Aashrith Korampally & Aayush Khadse (13), Leo Cheng & Ayub Ahmed (21)
Congress: 173 entries
Samantha Tran (12), Jason Chen (51), Alia Hassan (56)
Mallika • Apr 20, 2026 at 7:27 pm
Amazing work like always, congrats to all the Bellaire debaters.
Ethan R • Apr 13, 2026 at 1:46 pm
Great story Alia!