The University of the Pacific Speech and Debate Society left for Salt Lake City Utah this past weekend to compete in the annual Mile High Speech and Debate tournament. Traveling by car from Stockton, California all the way to Salt Lake City, Utah was no small task. This meant that the team had to travel through mountainous roads in the snow, ice, and the rain to reach their destination. Director of Forensics, Steven Farias, Individual Event coach Kelly Lootz, and Assistant coaches Jonathan Bruce, and Reed Ramsey led the Tigers to success in both debate and individual events.
The tournament officially started on Thursday, January 5th with the first half of the Mile High Swing hosted by Texas Tech University. This year brought with it many unknown variables that would make this Mile High memorable. Firstly, this is the first year the tournament has run for four days rather than three, which enabled more rounds and a more smoothly run tournament. Secondly, this has been some of the coldest weather that Utah has seen in many years. Despite the inclement weather, the University of Utah handled the tournament with the utmost flexibility in terms of allowing teams to submit judging preferences later and understanding late registrations. In addition, they made significant accommodations for all teams during the tournament itself, from food to individual space heaters in school’s preparation rooms.
The first half of the Mile High Swing included five preliminary debate rounds and a double octa-final break. This half of the Mile High Swing follows the model of the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence tournament that happens towards the end of the parliamentary debate season. The NPTE also offers topic areas before the tournament, which differs from the traditional form of parliamentary debate. Typically, debaters are given a different topic from round-to-round with 20 minutes to prepare in affirmation or negation to the topic.
Mile High also includes Individual Events, which include speeches and acting. University of the Pacific (UoP) brought students to compete in both tournaments and came out with tremendous success. In the first half, UoP had two teams make it to double octa-finals (Kayla Gerdes and Noreen Javed, and Melissa Munoz and Erika Jauregui) and one team make it to the quarterfinal rounds (Paul Villa and Dallas Phillips).
In Individual Events UoP brought two students who dominated the tournament. Joslynn Howard placed fourth in After Dinner Speaking, first in Dramatic Interpretation, first in Prose, and first in Poetry. In the second half, she placed sixth in After Dinner Speaking, second in Dramatic Interpretation, third in Prose, and first in Poetry. In addition to Howard, Andrew Morgan also represented UoP in Individual events. Both Morgan and Howard won first place in Duo interpretation at both halves of the tournament. In addition, Morgan got second in Dramatic Interpretation, second in Prose, second in Poetry, and fourth in Impromptu. In the second half of the tournament, Morgan got first in Dramatic Interpretation, second in Prose, and second in Poetry. Overall, Pacific’s Speech squad received second in overall sweepstakes in the tournament.
At the second half of the debate tournament hosted by the University of Utah, Pacific struck gold in Parliamentary debate. Pacific’s Noreen Javed and Kayla Gerdes made it to double octa-finals while Dallas Phillips and Paul Villa made it all the way to the final round. On a 2-1 decision Pacific won the second half of the Mile High debate tournament. Although not all of Pacific made it out of the brutal preliminary rounds, every single one of the competitors contributed to the success of the Tigers comprehensively. The research skills of Megan Chatelain and Domenic Lesaca, who were just shy of breaking in both halves of the tournament, deserve special recognition. In the end, Pacific Speech and Debate Society represented California to the fullest and demonstrated their ability to be nationally competitive in both speech and debate.
