St Catherine's 12th annual debating competition took place (October 8-10) via Zoom for the second year in succession. The competition was well attended with 42 teams representing nine schools from Athens and Thessaloniki.

Our own team ended up celebrating a number of successes after competing in the virtual speech tournament. We are very proud that St Catherine's own Carolina Bafas and Karl Eichholz were the overall winners of the competition, outscoring every debater at the tournament and, thus, securing the award given to the debaters who had the most cumulative points out of all participants.

All students participating are feeling proud of themselves as in each debate round they are challenged to step out of their comfort zones. "It gets a little bit easier as we go but we always have to work hard to sharpen our skills for the next time.", our team members stated. All of us in St Catherine's we adore the sense of commitment the students exhibit since they choose to spend their free time researching and preparing for the tournament and then sacrifice a full weekend to compete.

The ability to apply what you learn from constructive riticism in order to prevail paves the way for resilience building. Therefore, we would like also to thank our alumni Fil Lekkas (2010), Fonie Mitsopoulou (2018), Dimitra Georgantaki (2020), Aristotelis Foteiou (2017), Cleo Fourli (2021), Lenya Singer (2020), Alberto Polimeni (2016) who judged at the tournament and are staying in close contact with our School.

Our team members are looking forward for upcoming debate competitions; congratulations to all students, parents, teachers and judges for forging such amazing alternative learning experiences.