Our Coaching Network

Coach Alex Libkind

Coach Alex Libkind has coached speech, debate and Model Congress for over 9 years in HAFTR High School. As a former NSDA (formerly NFL) Lincoln-Douglas, Model Congress, and Speech competitor, Coach Alex knew the power of competing in the NSDA tournaments. His goal from the first day that he took over the HAFTR Team was to bring the NSDA to Yeshiva High Schools.

Now as Chair of the Citron Online NSDA District, Coach Alex has achieved one of his major goals — bringing Yeshiva students to the National Tournament.

Coach Mike Convey

Coach Mike Convey has been involved in the Speech and Debate community since 2008. First as a competitor in Policy and Lincoln-Douglas then as a Coach. He brings a wealth of experience in the competitive debate space with proven results qualifying students to the NSDA National Tournament and the Tournament of Champions.

By day Coach Mike performs environmental investigations and by night trains the next generation of great debaters as the Citron Online NSDA District Debate Director.

Coach Sarah Dowden (Alumni)

Coach Sarah Dowden has been involved in the Speech and Debate community since 2018. She has competed locally and on the National circuit competing in big draw tournaments like Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, and the NSDA National Tournament twice. During the National Tournament competition she broke into elimination rounds in Lincoln-Douglas. Sarah has leadership and training experience in Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum, Extemp Debate, and Congressional Debate.

When not competing in debate, Coach Sarah attends school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign majoring in computer science.

Coach Batya Kimyagarov (Alumni)

Coach Batya Kimyagarov has been involved in speech and debate since 2019. As a student she helped her school develop a strong legacy program that is still highly competitive on the Citron Circuit. Batya has a proven track record of competition success in Congressional Debate as both a PO, competitor, a 2023 Senate National Qualifier, and Extemp Debate. Her dedication to service was front and center as a volunteer National Judge and Parilmentarian for the 2023 NSDA Middle School National Tournament.

Currently, Batya is continuing her education at City College of New York studying biomedical sciences.

Coach Benjamin Cohen (Alumni)

    Coach Benjamin Cohen has been involved with speech and debate competitions since 2020. As the founder of his high school’s debate and speech team he has gained valuable experience in program development of new speech and debate teams. His primary events earned him a unique combination of speech skills from Congressional Debate and philosophical/framework skills from Lincoln-Douglas which makes him adaptable to most events. After qualifying for Nationals in Lincoln-Douglas he was drafted into the inaugural Citron District World Schools Team for Nationals in 2023.

  

    Benjamin will be continuing his religious education at Yeshivah Orayta in Jerusalem. Thereafter, he will be studying Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland.

Our Leadership

Citron Online Board of Directors

Alex Libkind
Michael Convey

Victoria Allen

Citron Online NSDA Board

Alex Libkind (HAFTR) - Chair

Victoria Allen (North Shore)

Simcha Frishman (DRS)

Thomas Messersmith (Katz)

Kyla Crowther (Katz)