The Jesuit debate team, having hosted the Jesuit College Preparatory School Debate Invitational from February 10-11, has focused their attention onto the most important event of the year, the Texas Forensics Association State Tournament.
Flying up to Amarillo on February 29, the debate team will bring along an astounding four teams this year, “a testament to the perseverance of the debaters,” according to Dr. Tracy McFarland, who coaches alongside Mr. Dan Lingel. The teams of Kevin Kim ’12 and Tanner Davis ’13; Jackson Pike ’14 and James Abbott ’14; Grant VanKirk ’13 and Jeff Melsheimer ’14; and Ryan Tan ’13 and James Mantil ’12 will head to Amarillo to compete against 125 other teams from schools around the state.
The tournament, composed of five preliminary rounds, will take the top 32 teams from those rounds and condense them into a “March Madness” style bracket. Mr. Lingel’s goal for the tournament is “to try to get as many teams as we can into the top 32, then hopefully we can take it one debate at a time after that.”
Knowing that he will be competing against local teams like Greenhill, Coppell, Colleyville, and Grapevine High School, Tan believe the key to his team’s success will be “using philosophy and politics in my debate, and speaking really, really fast.”
The Jesuit debate team has won the state tournament four times in the last decade, so the odds are that Jesuit will perform exceptionally well. While the winners of the state tournament do not advance to a later competition, the Jesuit debate team has qualified two teams so far for the National Debate Coaches Association Debate Tournament, which will be held in Las Vegas in late-March. Another competition, held for freshman and J.V. debaters, is scheduled to be in Atlanta in mid-April.
To stay up-to-date with Jesuit debate, check out: http://www.jesuitcp.org/page.aspx?pid=1648
