Photo courtesy of Mountain Brook Schools.
Jane Grey Battle, MBHS debate team captain, has been named a member of the USA Debate Team and will travel internationally over the next year.
Mountain Brook High School student Jane Grey Battle is currently ranked as the #1 debater in the state by the National Speech and Debate Association.
In August, Battle became one of only 12 debaters nationwide to be named a member of the 2021-22 USA Debate Team.
Battle is the first student from the state of Alabama who will compete on this prestigious team.
Later this year, she and her teammates will take part in tournaments at several Ivy League schools and internationally in events hosted by Singapore, Croatia, Germany and Thailand.
According to the National Speech and Debate Association, the mission of USA Debate is to join the global promotion of free and civil discourse, foster international cooperation and education and demonstrate competitive excellence and national pride.
In 2018, Battle won a national championship in Middle School Public Forum Debate, earning Mountain Brook its first-ever National Speech and Debate Tournament championship title in this division.
As a high school student, she has championed the Alabama State Debate tournament three times.
She’s also been a qualifier to the National Speech and Debate tournament three times, in Public Forum and Congressional Debate events, a feat that less than 1% of all student-members achieve even once.
This past summer, she and debate partner Maggie Doyle advanced to the quarterfinals in the national tournament, placing 7th out of 362 teams in the division, the highest level any Public Forum team from Alabama has advanced to since the inception of the event in 2002.
Battle serves as captain of the Mountain Brook debate team, is a member of the National Forensic League Honor Society, and has been named an Academic All-American.
She has received the Outstanding Debate Departmental Award, the Bill Gunn Research Award, and is a recipient of the Clinton Taylor Scholarship.
– Submitted by Liz Wood-Weas.
