Soumil Bhandari
Camp Instructor
He, Him, His
Soumil attended BASIS Independent McLean, and will be heading to Purdue University this fall. He compete in Public Forum on the national circuit, and over the course of my career he earned 5 TOC bids and qualified to the Tournament of Champions, the most prestigious tournament in high school debate, where he competed in Public Forum Gold. Soumil's proudest result was winning the 2025 Columbia Invitational with his partner, where they ran the table and went undefeated through six elimination rounds to take home the championship. They also went to deep out rounds at other national circuit tournaments: octofinals at Sunvite, Nova Titan, and the NSD Philly Camp Tournament (where the team went 6-0 in prelims before breaking), plus elim appearances at the John Edie Holiday Debates at Blake, the New York City Invitational, WACFL MetroFinals, and the Coolidge Qualifier. What Soumil loves most about coaching is teaching lay debate. He really enjoys helping students write strong cases, build clean narratives, sharpen their delivery, and adapt their strategy to whatever judge is sitting in the back of the room. The best debaters, tech or lay, are the ones who can make a judge actually care about and understand their side of the argument, and that's what he tries to pass on to every student heworks with.
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