*Sixteen Jesuit Debaters—12 Varsity and four Novice–competed this past weekend at the Coppell Invitational against teams from Athens, Coppell, Garland, Grapevine, Greenhill, Highland Park, and Melissa. Jesuit Novices closed out the novice division, earning first and second place, while three Varsity teams reached the quarterfinals before Ranger carnage resulted in all three losing 2-1 decisions and earning fifth place. Jesuit debaters also earned eight top-ten Speaker Awards across the two divisions and valuable State qualifying points for the varsity.
In the Varsity Division, Jesuit BP—Henry Banse ‘26 and Nathan Pascas ‘26—finished with a 3-1 record and earned the third seed before losing to the sixth seeded Greenhill team in the quarterfinals. Jesuit CJ—Langdon Carver ‘26 and Dylan Joseph ‘27—also finished with a 3-1 record and earned the fourth seed before losing to Highland Park in the quarterfinals. Jesuit LR—Luke Lastelick ’25 and Leo Ramirez ‘25—earned the eighth seed after preliminary rounds but lost a very close 2-1 decision to the top seed from Greenhill in the quarterfinals. As a result of their quarterfinal finish, all three teams earn two state qualifying points—12 points are necessary to qualify for the State tournament in March. Jesuit LR now has five points this season while BP and CJ earned their first points of the year.
In the Novice Division, both Jesuit teams finished the tournament undefeated. In the preliminary rounds both teams finished 4-0. Jesuit BG—Joseph Bui ’28 and Keshav Giridhar ‘28—earned the top seed and Jesuit PR—Shaurya Patel ‘28 and Theo Roberts ‘28—earned the second seed. Jesuit BG defeated fourth seed Coppell 9th and PR defeated third seeded Grapevine in the semifinals to close out the championship.
In addition to the team awards, four Varsity and all four Novices earned top 10 Speaker Awards. In the Varsity division, Nathan Pascas earned 3rd Speaker, Henry Banse 4th Speaker, Langdon Carver 8th Speaker, and Luke Lastelick 10th Speaker. In the Novice division, Keshav Giridhar earned the Top Speaker, his partner Joseph the 2nd Speaker, Shaurya Patel the 4th Speaker, and Theo Roberts the 9th Speaker.
Three other Jesuit teams competed and finished with 2-2 records, but did not earn top eight seeds. Jesuit MW—Levy Mendoza ‘25 and Carter Weiss ‘25—, Jesuit SS—Jonathan Shu ’27 and Mikhail Skariah ’27—, and Jesuit CNS—Anthony Castro Navarro ‘27 and Daniel Shao ’27.
As is often the tradition at tournaments, alumni joined the team to assistant coach and judge. This past weekend, Coach Lingel, Coach McFarland, and Coach Williams were joined by Alum Gio Ferrer-Falto ’19, Greg Tan ’17, and Zach Watts ‘17.
The Debate Team is debating a timely and very engaging topic this year; the National Policy Debate Resolution that all schools in the country will debate this year is Resolved: the United States Federal Government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.
Mr. Lingel was very happy with the Debate Team’s performance at the Coppell Invitation, especially with his Novice teams, stating:
“I am glad that at this meet, everyone got some experience, as not all competitions allow JV to compete.”
He is looking forward to the future of this season as they take trips to Chicago, Nashville, Berkeley, and Georgia.
*We thank Mr. Lingel for providing copy for this article.
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