Houston city champs make deep playoff run at NAUDL Nationals

April 13, 2026—Ayub Ahmed and Leo Cheng, Bellaire High School debaters fresh off clinching the Houston City Championships in February, thrilled their friends at HUDL by reaching the national semifinals in Policy Debate.

Over the second weekend of April, Harvard University hosted champions from 30 urban debate leagues around the country for this year's Urban Debate National Championship (UDNC). Houston was represented by the Bellaire team of Ahmed & Cheng as well as the Kathi & Do team from Debakey High School, who had placed as runners-up at the City Championships.

Ahmed & Cheng advanced to the elimination rounds as the 4th overall seed with an impressive 5-1 record in the preliminary rounds. In the knockouts, the two Bellaire debaters won both their octo-final and quarterfinal rounds on 3-0 decisions before losing a close 2-1 debate in semifinals to the Portland Urban Debate League's champs, who one round later went on to win the NAUDL national championship. In addition, the two Houston debaters were recognized with individual awards, with Cheng taking home the 9th place speaker's award and Ahmed capturing the 16th-place award.

Coached by Isaac Chao, the Bellaire team matched the second-best showing by a policy team in HUDL history, going as far as the 2023 Heights policy team of Eyuboglu & Peter, and surpassed only by Alief Kerr's 2019 second-place showing with the policy team of Eche & Nguyen.

HUDL congratulates all the participants on their hard work, dedication, and success. 

Some photos courtesy National Association for Urban Debate Leagues