The Pascack Hills Debate Team has completed yet another successful debate season for the 2025-2026 school year. Additionally, on April 15, 2026, the Pascack Hills debate team attended the annual debate awards dinner for the North Jersey Debate League to celebrate the season and honor outstanding debaters from Pascack Hills and other competing schools in the league.
What is the debate team?
The Pascack Hills debate team is a club that features policy debating against other schools in the North Jersey debate league: Pascack Valley High School, Indian Hills High School, Ramsey High School, Northern Highlands High School, Paramus High School, The Frisch School, and Glen Rock High School.
The debate team consists of two teams: A junior varsity and a varsity team, which are assisted and coached by social studies teacher Deborah Horn. The debate team meets every Tuesday after school and on Fridays during lunch to meet the needs of students. Varsity debaters have seven debate tournaments in the school year, which are during the school day, and each tournament contains four debates. The junior varsity team has five tournaments in the year, which take place after school, and each tournament contains two debates.
Season Recap:
This year, the debate team has had yet another successful season by acquiring awards throughout the monthly debates and at the concluding awards dinner.
Awards from monthly debate tournaments include:
Freshman Ridham Bhalla: Junior Varsity third-place speaker (two-time winner)
Junior Sabrina Madonick: Junior Varsity third-place speaker
Sophomore Dylan Wolpov: Junior Varsity second-place speaker
Freshman Andi Bauta: Junior Varsity third-place speaker award
Senior Vazyl Adams: Varsity third-place speaker award
Senior Justin Yoo: Varsity second-place speaker award
Seniors Justin Yoo and Vazyl Adams: Varsity third-place team award
Seniors Justin Yoo and Vazyl Adams: Varsity first-place team award
Freshmen Ridham Bhalla and Gurnoor Kaur: Junior Varsity first-place team award
Debate League Awards Dinner
The Debate Team Awards Dinner is the final event for the school year, where all schools in the North Jersey Debate League gather at one of the schools, have dinner, watch a debate between the top two varsity teams, and commemorate all award winners.
This year, the awards dinner was held at the Frisch School on April 15, 2026. Upon entry, students had the opportunity to eat dinner served by Frisch and find their seats and chat with fellow peers. Moreover, the coaches debate happened featuring the top two teams, which were from Paramus High School and Frisch High School. Paramus High School team took the Coaches Cup home at the end of the event. After this debate, the awards assembly was held.
For the awards assembly, many Pascack Hills alumni were able to get awards as well as the team as a whole.
The awards include:
Freshman Ridham Bhalla: Junior Varsity fourth-place overall speaker award
Sophomore Dylan Wolpov: Junior Varsity third-place overall speaker award
Senior Justin Yoo: Varsity, fifth-place overall speaker award
Senior Vazyl Adams: Varsity, eighth-place overall speaker award
Senior Justin Yoo: Coach’s Award
Senior Vazyl Adams: Coach’s Award
Pascack Hills JV debate team: third-place team overall
Reflecting
When asking Senior Vazyl Adams what he would wish to tell himself from when he was a first-time debater, Adams explains that he would tell himself to continue to work hard and keep being persistent, as he had been a nervous wreck at his first debate.
“If I could tell my past self anything when looking back at my first-ever debate, it would be to continue to be persistent and work hard to achieve what you want most. I remember being extremely nervous the first time debating both affirmative and negative, stuttering, and wishing I could make the crowd in front of me disappear. However, over time, I learned how to improve my ability to think on my feet, all through resilience,” says Adams.
Additionally, when asking Senior Justin Yoo what unwritten rule or tradition he would cherish after graduating and leaving the team, he responds by saying that he would miss and cherish the lunches in between breaks at tournaments.
“The debate lunches I’ll miss for sure, where we can sit down and just talk to each other between halves of the day after graduating from Pascack Hills,” Yoo says.
And lastly, freshman debate member Ridham Bhalla explains how participating in debate has accelerated her ability to think on her feet and become a better public speaker.
“Debate has really taught me how to think on the spot and become more confident in creating new ideas. That’s definitely helped me grow not only as a student but as a public speaker as well,” says Bhalla.
Overall, the Pascack Hills debate team is an amazing club that gives students the opportunity to learn the complexities of policy debate and the assistance of becoming better speakers, listeners, teammates, and students, while practicing their passion.
As the season concludes, the debate team gets ready to embrace new policy debate topics for the next year, and recruiting new members and strengthening the ones who have displayed participation in the past. Alongside that, the team wishes good luck and expresses thanks to all the hardworking senior debaters that have helped overcome challenges and assist younger debaters.
Take a look at a photo gallery!
