Jesuit debate has started their season off with a bang, claiming top three honors at the Plano Senior Debate Tournament on September 5th, and earning fifth place at the regional level Grapevine Tournament on September 12-13. These two finishes came against stiff competition because “Dallas is one of the best debate cities in the country,” according to Coach Dan Lingel.
“September debate is great. Varsity debates first at a local tournament (Plano Senior), next at a state tournament (Grapevine), and finally at a national level tournament (Greenhill) where you can [see] how you stack up against everyone in the country,” said Coach Lingel. That’s why he loves debate in the month of September. These tournaments gauge how good the team’s chances are of making the Texas State Championship, which “has one of the hardest qualifications for any state tournaments in the country.”
Each Jesuit Debate Team, consisting of two people, needs twelve total points over the course of the competition season to qualify for the State Tournament. At the local Plano Senior Tournament, Patrick Bender ’16 and Emanuel Ruiz ’17 earned first place and got eight of the twelve points they need for state. Second place finishers, Praneeth Kalva ’16 and Ethan Tsao ’16, garnered six of their twelve required points and third place finishers, Joe Hall ’16 and Jake Lorocco ’17, secured 4 points. There were twenty teams at the local tournament from McKinney Boyd, Coppell, Grapevine, Greenhill, Trinity Valley, and Southlake Carroll High Schools. This early success continued on to the next weekend in Grapevine.
At the regional tournament in Grapevine, 76 teams from ten different states battled it out with the dynamic duo of Joe Hall ’16 Jake Lorocco ’17 earning four more points to bring their total up to eight. The Hall-Lorocco team went 4-1 in the preliminary round, beating teams from Law Magnet, Casady Oklahoma, Hendrickson High School, and Lindale High School, ranking as the thirteenth seed going into the next round. In their first elimination match, they dominated  the fourth-seeded team from the Winston Churchill High School in San Antonio, “a major upset,” according to Coach Lingel. In the quarterfinals, they vehemently fought the Liberal Arts and Sciences School from Austin, but they came up short, bringing their Cinderella story to an end; however, they still finished fifth place overall in the tournament, the best finish at the Grapevine Tournament since 2010 when Jesuit closed out the State Championship, earning both first and second place.
Two other teams from Jesuit competed in the tournament, Patrick Bender ’16 and Emmanuel Ruiz ’17 and seniors Praneeth Kalva and Ethan Tsao. Both teams posted wins against teams from Ruston Lousiana, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Waco Midway and Colleyville Heritage, but only the top 16 teams qualified for the elimination rounds.
The Jesuit Debate teams hoped to build on their momentum and continue their high level of play at the national level Greenhill tournament on September 19th-21st. Â Mr. Lingel emphasized how lucky Jesuit is “to have [the national tournament] right around the corner in Greenhill. We can sleep in our own beds and debate against the best teams in the nation. That’s why debate in September is so great.”
