200 starry-eyed middle schoolers from all over Dallas step onto the blessed 28 acres for the Dallas Urban Debate Alliance [DUDA] workshop on Saturday, October 10th. These students came along with 50 freshman debaters from all around Texas who came for a debate scrimmage, held in the afternoon by our debate team and staff. Excited to be in their first ever debate, the kids packed themselves into Hughes Hall and watched Jesuit’s very own debate coaches and debaters talk about the sport they love.
The Dallas Urban Debate Alliance has done awesome work and has given so many Dallas kids an outlet for their fierce competitive natures and a platform to showoff their intellectual prowess. On the DUDA website it states that they have brought debate “to 60 schools in Dallas ISD,” a “huge” number, proclaimed Lingel, that highlights their commitment to the sport. Coach Lingel went on to note that “the [DUDA] statistics are crazy…[especially] the graduation rates and the college acceptance rates,” shown here by this quote from their website:
“…with its intense focus on critical reading and analysis skills, debaters are 70 percent more likely to reach the college-readiness benchmark in ACT reading and twice as likely to reach the benchmark for ACT English. Debate students are also exposed to college campuses, receive coaching assistance from college students, and debate in front of college recruiters. According to a survey by the National Forensic League, 64 percent of U.S. Congress members competed in debate or speech in high school.”
With amazing success like that, Dallas Urban Debate Alliance helps these aspiring debaters transition from high school to college, while also providing them with a lifelong skill.
So when the day came for the debate workshop, the schedule for the busy day went like this: “feed everyone breakfast, then 2 hours of learning debate, small group activities and ice breakers, then we broke for lunch and showed them a practice debate [between some of the veteran debaters], then they all got to have their first debates,” according to Debate Coach Dan Lingel. Mr. Lingel continued by telling the Roundup that the whole event was “really really cool” and acted as a “really good community service to promote Jesuit and debate.”
But, the glorious day wasn’t over for our generous Jesuit Debate Team. After the DUDA workshop, they continued donating their time to help Dallas’ debating youth by hosting a novice debate scrimmage, with 50 teams from 10 schools around Texas. The schools included our very own Jesuit Rangers, Colleyville, Heritage High School, Coppell, Denton Guyer, Grapevine, Greenville, Highland Park, Hebron, the International Leadership Academy from Garland, St. Marks and WT White. The debate scrimmage allowed all of the teams to get four more debates under their belts, as four debates are congruent with how long preliminary rounds are at debate tournaments.
Jesuit, who entered 14 teams, revealed not only their huge strength in numbers but also their debating skill and eloquence. The scrimmage highlighted some of Dallas debate’s brightest stars. 3 teams at the scrimmage went undefeated, and of those three, two of them were from Jesuit, the team of Ashik Amar ’19 and Pete Weigman ’19 and also the team of Jack Madden ’19 and Jack Moore ’19. The freshman team of Madden and Moore has especially surprised everyone because they have “[gone] undefeated in the prelims at the Newman Smith tournament and went undefeated again at the Jesuit scrimmage…[making me] excited from a coaching standpoint about the freshman numbers and skill, ” Coach Lingel happily stated.
Some debaters showed off their versatility as students as well as their prowess in debate when a few debaters went to their cross-country meet in the morning or went to their band competition after the scrimmage. This ability to juggle multiple extra curricular activities made the debate coaches even more ecstatic, as Coach Lingel calling this feat “very Ignatian.”
Be sure to join the Roundup and keep up with Jesuit Debate as the whole team goes to Plano West this weekend!
