Iqbal Kassam – Young debaters aim to talk their way to the top in Qatar

Meet the other Team Canada: Young debaters aim to talk their way to the top in Qatar

They’re Canada’s other gold hopefuls.

While the brawn heads west toward Vancouver, the brains have headed east to the World Schools Debating Championships in Qatar, where the Canadian national high-school debate team is looking to win international bragging rights for the first time in more than 20 years.

Team Canada Debate includes nine precocious, highly opinionated teenagers from all over the country, still exuberant from an upset win at a European competition last fall.

-snip- Iqbal Kassam, the 17-year-old team captain from Vancouver, rolled his eyes.

Team Canada Debate Team 2010

All nine Team Canada 2010 members will attend the World Schools Debating Championships in Doha, Qatar, in February 2010. The WSDC allows up to five debating members from each country to compete. The competiting members are Iqbal Kassam, Keenan MacNeal, Veenu Goswami, Jonathan Carson, and Lyle Dobbin.

Iqbal Kassam (second from right) – In his final year of high school debate, Iqbal looks forward to the challenges 2010 will bring. A grade 12 student from West Point Grey Academy, Iqbal is the team’s returning member from the 2009 team that competed in Athens. He was Canada’s top speaker, placing 8th individually at Worlds. Iqbal has debated in a variety of tournaments across the globe since the 8th grade. Outside of debate which has consumed a disproportionate amount of his life, Iqbal is a talented baroque violinist and has somewhat of a flair for cooking. Things he does not do particularly well include mathematics and making sense of maps. Iqbal hopes that his experiences at WSDC 2009 as well as his good looks will help Team Canada in its quest for the coveted title.

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