At Smith, on September 18th and 19th, sophomores Ian Mahmud and Colin Etnire finished 3-2, narrowly dropping their final round to miss their chance at their first varsity-level "break" in their first tournament without novice status.

The following weekend, 4 novice teams went to BU's novice-only tournament with a massive field of 108 teams. Sophomores Corey Creedon and Umar Khan had a particularly strong outing, finishing with a 3-1 record, and the rest of the Bates debaters finished at a solid 2-2. Confidence is high that this strong early showing will lead to a stellar year on the circuit.

The hotly-anticipated Harvard University tournament comes up next weekend, October 9th and 10th, and Bates will be sending a large contingent in an effort to continue the momentum of the first few weeks of the season.