Saint Mary’s Macken Debate Team Cleans Up JV Debate at First In-Person Tournament
Six students and two coaches piled into a car and drove down to San Diego for two days of NFA-LD Debate and Parliamentary Debate. 26 other schools from six states also traveled to San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University to compete in the Sunset Cliffs Classic Tournament. SMC came back with first and second place trophies in NFA-LD Junior Varsity and placed three students in top ten speaker positions over multiple types of debate. The new novices rocked the tournament with their arguments and were only one win short of going to out-rounds.
In NFA-LD Junior Varsity Logan Goldstein was the top speaker, an impressive feat because this was his first tournament in Lincoln Douglas debate. Right behind him, Kathy Barajas earned second place speaker in NFA-LD JV debate. Logan and Kathy both won three preliminary rounds and lost one. When they made it to the final round, they tied for first place! Demetri Papageorge was the 5th place speaker and collected two wins and two losses in preliminary rounds. In Open NFA-LD, Ojaswi Sharma battled our neighbor to the east, University of the Pacific before winning with an affirmative strategy highlighting the stories of people harmed by drone strikes.
Katherine Trevino-Yoson and Autumn Adeyan, our newest novices, jumped into Parliamentary Debate, a two vs two format, and earned two wins out of their four debates. Both decided that debate was for them and plan to compete in our next tournament, Nov. 5-7 hosted by Liberty University. Kathy Barajas and Demetri Papageorge competed in their first non-collapsed Junior Varsity Parliamentary Debate division. They fought hard on topics ranging from cancel culture to mandating vaccines. While not advancing, Demetri Papageorge placed 9th of the top ten speakers.
SMC’s Macken Debate and Speech Team is grateful for all the support that makes these accomplishments possible.
The team is always looking for more new novices to introduce to debate! If you or someone you know is interested, please contact Coach Andrea Brown (alb11@stmarys-ca.edu)
Go Gaels!