PHILADELPHIA — Masterman School's debate team has no budget or coach. It competes against teams from well-funded suburban districts and pricey private schools with long histories of big-stage victories.
This month, the team just scored its own, with a pair of Masterman debaters winning the varsity public forum division at the 48th University of Pennsylvania Tournament, which drew 120 high school debaters from 23 states. It was the first such victory by a Philadelphia School District team at least in recent memory, organizers say.
The winning debaters, Henry Anastasi and Joshua Cohen, beat students with a combined $250,000 in private-school tuition, they said. (And yes, they wore Eagles shirts when they debated, a nod to another Philly team competing the same day.)
It was a little surreal to beat teams whose debates he had been watching on YouTube just a year ago as a way to take his team to the next level, Cohen said.
"We're not on the outside, compared to how we felt a year ago," Anastasi said. "I don't want to be the person punching down."
The win was a big deal for the do-it-yourself team of about 20, whose four captains — sophomore Ana Sorrentino, juniors Anastasi and Cohen, and senior Sammie Keenan — spent the early part of their school year just finding an adult to serve as a sponsor for the squad.
Eventually, Michael Kamison, a teacher new to the district and working at Masterman on special assignment, stepped in to provide adult supervision. Coaches typically help with the extensive prep work required for public forum debate, but at Masterman, the students do the work, with captains compiling all research needed for their cases and providing tutelage for the rest of the team.
"The four of us work all week with our novice teams individually and do our own prep," Keenan said. "Other teams just don't have to do that; they get to be presented with their cases and their evidence, and go to the tournament with all that in their pocket."
A number of Philadelphia high schools — mostly magnets such as Masterman, Central, and Academy at Palumbo — have debate clubs, coordinated through the nonprofit After School Activities Partners, with weekly debates held at Central High from November through March. But Masterman's team, the largest with about 20 members, is alone in competing on the national circuit.
"We are not necessarily a name that gets out to these national tournaments, that evokes fear in these other schools," Kamison said diplomatically. "We are just working our way into that world."
And though Masterman has fewer students from economically disadvantaged homes and fewer students of color than most Philadelphia schools, it's still a public school, and not all families know about the academic sport or have the funds tosend their children to national competitions.
Entry fees often cost about $500, and travel expenses could cost $1,000 or more, depending on the location of the tournament and the number of students competing. That's an issue, given Masterman's budget of zero. In the past, the team was self-funded; this year, Masterman's Home and School Association kicked in $2,000.
"Some of the big schools will send 10 teams of two people, and that would be multiple thousands of dollars," Cohen said. "We have a very small group of people who go."
(Penn was possible because Masterman, as a Philadelphia School District team, had its entry fee waived, and the hometown tournament meant no travel costs.)
The team has built itself up over the last several years, with alumni mentoring the current captains. But it hopes to use its recent strengths to attract more debaters and more help.
Kamison, who's new to the national debate circuit, called the team a "well-oiled machine."
"They're really proud of what they do," he said. "They are really enthusiastic about this sort of competition, and this sort of intellectual engagement. I'm there as sort of a facilitator of their intellectual ambition."
Kamison is awed by the work the students do: hundreds of pages of prep, hours of practice and self-coaching on top of their significant school responsibilities.
And the teacher, who loved the taste of high school debate he got as a student himself, said he's "caught the bug" and hopes to stick around to guide the team as it grows.
"I'm inherently not a competitive person, but there's something about watching my teams compete — it's thrilling," Kamison said. "This group of students are so passionate about this topic and about this event that you can't help but match their enthusiasm."
