Town Crier Report

Mountain View High School student Stephen Hess won the national Lincoln-Douglas Debate at the Tournament of Champions held April 29 through May 1 at the University of Kentucky.

Fellow MVHS student Prashant Rai made it to the semifinal round, placing third in the competition.

Seniors Hess and Rai have been debating on the Mountain View-Los Altos Speech and Debate team since they were freshmen. Going into the competition, Rai was ranked third in the nation and Hess was ranked eighth.

Both Hess and Rai, who helped propel the debate team to 11th in the nation, plan to continue working with the team next year while they attend college.

It is rare for a school to send two debaters to the Tournament of Champions and even more unusual that they would make it to the final four in competition, said head coach Terese Tricamo.

Seventy debaters from around the nation were invited to the annual debate named for the 1858 campaign debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas as they ran for U.S. Senate from Illinois.