{"id":56118,"date":"2016-06-30T14:23:40","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T21:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=56118"},"modified":"2016-06-30T14:23:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T21:23:40","slug":"ananda-college-emerge-champions-at-the-11th-sri-lanka-schools-english-debating-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/06\/30\/ananda-college-emerge-champions-at-the-11th-sri-lanka-schools-english-debating-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"ANANDA COLLEGE EMERGE CHAMPIONS AT THE 11TH\u00a0SRI LANKA SCHOOLS\u2019 ENGLISH DEBATING CHAMPIONSHIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Press Release –\u00a0Ananda College English Debating Society <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The English Debating\u00a0Team of\u00a0Ananda College (Team-B)\u00a0emerged Champions at\u00a0the 11th<\/sup>\u00a0Sri Lanka Schools\u2019 English Debating Championship, organized by the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo. The aforesaid tournament is considered to be the\u00a0pinnacle of the local English debating scene, the most prestigious all-island inter-school debating championship and the tournament with the highest number of participant schools every year; This year saw the participation of\u00a056 teams\u00a0from around\u00a028 schools\u00a0from all over the island.<\/p>\n

Not only did B-Team of Ananda College emerge as Champions, they did so by defeating the \u2018A-team\u2019 of their own school at the Grand Finale; an All-Ananda Final\u201d so to speak, an occurrence that has never happened at the said tournament; a Final round where the\u00a0both teams\u00a0competing for the coveted title were from the\u00a0same school.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s champion team comprised of Sandun Batagoda, Mahin De Silva and Yuwanath De Silva, and the Runner up team comprised of Tharuka Perera, Minul Muhandiramge and Navindu Palliyaguruge. Furthermore two speakers from the above teams were ranked among the top 10 individual best speakers of the tournament with Mahin De Silva ranking 4th<\/sup>\u00a0and Minul Muhandiramge ranking 8th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

\"AnadaCollege\"<\/p>\n

The Grand Final was held on the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0of June 2016 from 5 pm onwards at the Senate Hall of the College House of the University of Colombo. Furthermore, a team from Ananda College also managed to make it up to the finals of the same tournament in 2014, and ended up becoming the runners\u2019 up of the tournament.<\/p>\n

3 teams, namely A, B and C teams, participated from Ananda College\u00a0at the aforesaid tournament this year while the A Team members\u00a0participated for the tournament in the middle of their last term test (ALs).\u00a0 They are sitting for their A Level exams this August.<\/p>\n

Moreover,\u00a0B team and C teams\u00a0formerly participated at the Asian Schools’ Debating Championship in\u00a0Malaysia, just 2 weeks before the\u00a0Sri Lanka Schools\u2019 English Debating Championship\u00a0with both teams winning 4 and 3 rounds respectively\u00a0out of the 6 preliminary rounds. Ananda College was the only Sri Lankan Debating team that participated at the said tournament this year. Furthermore,\u00a0the A team has also participated at the Asian Schools\u2019 Debating Championship in previous years.<\/p>\n

At this year’s Sri Lanka Schools Debating Championship,\u00a0Team A and Team B won 6 out of the 8 preliminary rounds and\u00a0qualified for the octo-finals and won each round at separate octo-finals, quarter\u00a0finals and semifinals. At the semifinals\u00a0A team and the B team emerged victorious against Royal College, Colombo and Colombo International School respectively.<\/p>\n

Seniors, members of team A were the main mentors of\u00a0the members of team B together\u00a0with the other senior ex- debaters along with coaches Mr. Damitha Karunarathne Attorney-at-Law and\u00a0Mr. Lithmal Jayawardhana.<\/p>\n

The team also acknowledge the long term\u00a0support received from Mr. Gomin Dayasri Attorney-at-Law,\u00a0Mr. Nishantha de Silva and Mr.\u00a0Tharindra Gooneratne as well as the teachers in charge Mrs. Ramya Samaradivakara, Mrs. Sunethra Siriwardena, Mrs. Shymalie Perera\u00a0and the Principal of Ananda College, Mr. Kithsiri Liyanagamage.<\/p>\n

Furthermore special acknowledgment must be given Mr. Damitha Karunarathne, who has been coaching the Ananda College English Debating Team\u00a0for over 5 years as a volunteer and an Old Anandian.<\/p>\n

Team B was joyous in discovering that\u00a0they won against their senior\u00a0team A at the finals.\u00a0 However, \u00a0their immediate reaction was to call upon their seniors (team A) to receive the Champions Trophy as the seniors were the main reason they were as good as they were.<\/p>\n

Judges were of very high caliber comprised of the members of the Moot Court and Debating Society of the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo,\u00a0Debaters Council of Sri Lanka including Lawyers and other professionals. Judges\u00a0Unanimously agreed that it was one of the best\u00a0finals they have seen at this tournament for\u00a0a long time.<\/p>\n

When asked about the victory, Mr. Damitha Karunarathne said, The path to glory was definitely not an easy one, it was full of obstacles, but the team managed to persevere and make many great achievements along the way.\u00a0Most\u00a0importantly,\u00a0we had to train ourselves to believe in\u00a0ourselves, when things weren’t going great. It took us more than half a decade\u00a0to get to where we are.”<\/p>\n

Some of the notable achievements for the team\u00a0along the way include\u00a0becoming the champions of the Asian Schools\u2019 Debating Championship in 2012 in the Novice Category,\u00a0becoming\u00a0the\u00a0Champions at “The Debater”\u00a0organized by\u00a0MTV Sports Channel\u00a0(1st<\/sup>\u00a0Season)\u201d in 2013, becoming Overall Champions of Vijitha Weerasinghe Challenge Shield\u201d organized by Royal College\u00a0Colombo in 2015 and\u00a0qualifying for the advanced and\u00a0final rounds of many local and international tournaments\u00a0\u00a0and producing many great individual speakers along the way.<\/p>\n

And Mr. Lithmal Jayawardhana, added in, by saying, I am extremely proud to say that our juniors have surpassed all of us by a trillion miles and have achieved greater heights in the field of debating that we could only dream of. It is also very endearing to see the results of the countless hours spent on by us as a team, engaging in stressful debates, hectic research sessions and what not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minul Muhandiramge, the captain of the A team said, My team decided to take part in this tournament this year, even in the middle of our final term test before our AL examination which is in August, because the deep love we have for debating, the contingent and our school. It was indeed a privilege to go up against our own juniors from school, and the fact that they managed to defeat us at the finals brings us only a sense of joy and pride, that the future of debating at Ananda is in really good hands!\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the captain of the champion team, Sandun Batagoda said, We would like to dedicate this victory to our A team, our coaches, our fellow debaters, because we wouldn\u2019t be where we are now, if not for them; especially the members of the A team who were practically our mentors. We would also to thank all our well-wishers for supporting us throughout our journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Audience included students from Ananda College,\u00a0sponsors,\u00a0parents of debaters, teachers,\u00a0fellow debaters from participating schools,\u00a0lecturers of the University of Colombo,\u00a0students of the Faculty of Law and debate enthusiasts.<\/p>\n

Few of the past champions of the aforesaid tournament includes, St. Thomas\u2019 College, Mount, Royal College, Colombo, St. Joseph\u2019s College, Colombo and Gateway College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Press Release –\u00a0Ananda College English Debating Society The English Debating\u00a0Team of\u00a0Ananda College (Team-B)\u00a0emerged Champions at\u00a0the 11th\u00a0Sri Lanka Schools\u2019 English Debating Championship, organized by the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo. The aforesaid tournament is considered to be the\u00a0pinnacle of the local English debating scene, the most prestigious all-island inter-school debating championship and the tournament with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}