Pepperdine’s Speech and Debate team season opened up at the Golden Gate Season Opener located in San Francisco as three members of the team won speaker awards and two teams qualified for the finals.
The tournament featured teams from California Nevada and Arizona. In the Varsity Policy Division seniors Jaime Franklin and Carina Yaghsezian finished the tournament with a 3-3 record and a ninth-place finish out of 21 teams. Franklin also received a speaker award for finishing in third place.
In the Junior Varsity Policy Division freshmen Charmaine Cleveland and Justin Farber finished the preliminary rounds ranked fifth with a 4-2 record. Farber won a speaker award for second place speaker in the JV Division.
Farber wrote in an email “I was actually rather surprised and pleased … this was my first college policy debate tournament and it was substantially different from high school debate in South Dakota.”
Farber said they had great success in their first tournament together.
“Charmaine and I debated together for just this one tournament since our regular season partners both had prior engagements” he wrote. “This was her first policy tournament and did excellent all around. We worked together well.”
“Debate is a sport of the mind: it takes incredible multitasking and memorization skills as well as the ability to instantaneously think on your feet Farber continued.
In the Varsity Parliamentary division, juniors Jon Rios and Matt qualified for the octofinals, which are the final sixteen teams left in the tournament, with a 4-2 record.
Senior Zac Parsons, president of the speech and debate team, and sophomore Jordan Kahler finished the preliminary round with a 4-2 record and advanced to the finals, where they finished in second place out of 35 teams.
Parsons also received a speaker award for finishing as fifth place speaker among the seventy debaters.
I am so proud of our team and the competitiveness we showed. Our freshmen rose to the occasion and performed very well he wrote. We sent six teams to the tournament and all six had a preliminary record of 3-3 or better that is a very impressive success rate.”
Parsons said the dynamic with his partner was an advantage.
“We reached a new level of competitiveness at the end of last year with our performance at both National tournaments he said.
He also added, I can’t believe how much the debate program at Pepperdine has grown and how competitive we have become.
“Our coaching staff is amazing and I expect great things out of each of our teams this year.”
The coaching team is comprised of professors from the communications department. The Director of Forensics here at Pepperdine is Dr. Sarah Stone Watt who has many years of experience in all aspects of debate.
Assistant Director of Forensics is Dr. Kristine Clancy who has spent the last three years at Pepperdine as a coach also coaches the parliamentary team and helps with the policy team.
The individual events coach is Christa Sloan who has eight years of experience in speech competiting and coaching.
The next policy debate tournament is the Vegas Classic at University of Nevada Las Vegas starting Friday Oct. 2. The Parliamentary team and Individual Events will be held in Azusa Calif. on Oct. 17and 18.