Greenhills Ethics Bowl Claims State and Central Division Titles, Advances to Nationals

There are victories that feel decisive. And then there are victories that feel earned, round by round, argument by argument, question by question. On February 1, after a weekend of competition held at Eastern Michigan University, the Greenhills Ethics Bowl Green Squad earned something rare: the title of Michigan Ethics Bowl State Champions for the second year in a row.

After navigating fierce competition and a series of split decisions, the team closed the tournament with a commanding 3–0 sweep over Academy of the Sacred Heart and finished the weekend with a perfect 7–0 record. It was a performance marked not by volume or theatrics, but by clarity, composure, and intellectual courage.

“Curiosity is the engine that drives it all, the whole buggy, and these kids have it,” said Greenhills Ethics Bowl Coach Mark Randolph, “It begins with a fundamental humility that makes them incredibly powerful. It goes against the common wisdom of the moment, but I think it is much more sustainable, and it’s much closer to something that’s eternal. These kids are quite inspiring—they are so moved to motivate themselves—and that really is why I got into this business.”

The championship-winning Green Squad included senior captains Aoife Tang (returning from last year’s state championship team), Alex DaSilva, and Ajay Purohit, along with sophomore Saroya Shea (also returning from last year’s title run) and talented senior newcomers Harper Cash and Leah Stepany. Together, they represented one of two Greenhills teams competing at the state level.

The Blue Squad, captained by senior Abraham Zhang, brought its own surge of momentum. After entering the competition with less experience, they powered through the first day with a 3–1 record and advanced to the quarterfinals. Team members Henry Miller ’29, Abha Saad ’28, Nata Yonkoski ’27, Timmy Lee ’28, Ryan Wu ’28, Clare Hatch ’26, Eesha Parekh ’29, and Zeyad Alawi ’28 demonstrated the depth and collaborative strength of the Greenhills program.

“They have tremendous experience,” said Randolph, “and I use the term experience as a term of art because, for me as a coach, I define experience as what you get when you don’t get what you want. So it’s really important to get knocked down so you can get up again, and this is what they’ve got. They’ve learned the hard way, and that has really been a wonderful cauldron for forging their team bonds.”

Though the Blue Squad fell in a tightly contested round to a formidable Ann Arbor Pioneer team, the Green Squad advanced to the semifinals, defeated Washtenaw International High School (WiHi), and then avenged Blue’s earlier loss by taking down Pioneer in a hard-fought semifinal. That victory set the stage for a final round sweep and Greenhills’ fifth state title, which is the most of any school in Michigan Ethics Bowl history.

The next chapter of this year’s story was written on February 17–19, at the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University, when Greenhills faced the Texas State Championship winners Clements High School in the Central Division Championship. The match was close, with both teams performing brilliantly, but the decision ultimately went to Greenhills and earned the team the Central Division title and a bid to compete at the National Ethics Bowl Championship at UNC Chapel Hill, April 10–12.

Back-to-back state championships, a division crown, and a return to the national stage is an extraordinary run. And it arrives at a meaningful moment.

The 2026 season marks the conclusion of Mark Randolph’s tenure coaching Greenhills Ethics Bowl program. Since the school first won the inaugural Michigan Bowl in 2013, the program has become a model of sustained excellence: 12 quarterfinal appearances in 13 years, seven trips to the state finals, its aforementioned five state championships, three national championship appearances, and a fourth-place finish in the country after a split semifinal decision to the eventual national champion. (One year, Greenhills had qualified for nationals before the event was canceled due to COVID.)

These statistics tell part of the story. The larger story is about students who have learned to listen carefully, disagree respectfully, reason rigorously, and pursue what philosophers call the summum bonum, or highest good.

“Greenhills kids love complex ideas,” said Randolph. “They love to take them apart, and they love to see what each part does in the larger system and then put it back together again. They do this when they’re arguing about who’s the GOAT, LeBron James or Michael Jordan. They do this when they try to argue that NIL is good for college sports. They do this when they argue whether Kid Rock is better than Bad Bunny. This is how their mind tends to work, and it’s a perfect way of approaching Ethics Bowl. That’s what philosophers do.”

When asked about what makes Greenhills teams so successful over the years, Randolph points to what he calls “the curriculum of the hallways.”

“It’s not something that we teach per se, but it’s something that we promote,” said Randolph, “And it goes beyond critical thinking. It’s what I like to call curiosity, and just a remarkable number of our kids have it.”

Randolph is also quick to credit former Greenhills colleague Jeanine DeLay for her pioneering work with ethics education at Greenhills, in Ann Arbor, and in the state of Michigan. DeLay is a founding member of A2Ethics and has been a guiding spirit of what the organization envisions as a new charter for civic commitment, based on community engagement with ethics and philosophy.

According to Randolph, “One year Jeanine said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this ethical competition, but for high school students. It’s called the Ethics Bowl, you have to put together a team.’ Of course, she knew best. I followed Jeanine’s advice, we put together a team, and that’s when we won the inaugural Ethics Bowl back in ’13.”

The pursuit of the highest good continues this April in Chapel Hill, where the Greenhills Green team will represent Michigan, the best of the Central Division, and what Greenhills does at its best: cultivating thoughtful leaders who understand that how we argue matters just as much as what we argue.