This year’s team of Chris Eckert and Genevieve Hackman are the 28th UK team in history to earn the automatic first-round bid.
The University of Kentucky Intercollegiate Debate Team, who are also the defending National Debate Tournament (NDT) champions, have received a first-round at-large bid to the 74th NDT. This year it will be be held at James Madison University.
The NDT committee ranks the top 16 teams in the nation and assigns them an automatic bid to tournament. The order of rankings are kept secret until the opening night of the tournament.
This year’s team of Chris Eckert and Genevieve Hackman are the 28th UK team in history to earn the automatic first-round bid. They are also the seventh team in the past five years to receive the honor. Eckert is one of just four freshmen in the country to receive the bid.
Other teams with automatic bids are Baylor, Dartmouth, Emory, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern (2), Rutgers, Trinity, Berkley (2), Kansas, Michigan (2) and Wake Forest.
The UK Debate Team is led by David Arnett and is housed in the College of Communication and Information at the University of Kentucky. You can follow the team at https://ci.uky.edu/UKDebate/.