This morning on a sports radio program I heard the General Manager of the Chargers give a mid term report on his team and of course we have recently gone through midterms hear at the university, so I thought I should pass along a very preliminary report on the progress of the Point Loma Nazarene University debate team in the nationwide rankings. We are currently ranked #5 in the nation.

Please note that this ranking is very preliminary as many tournament results are not yet posted, and some schools are not even credited yet with attending their fourth tournament (note: the rankings look to the schools top four tournaments of the year for comparison). For example Rice University should advance into the top three once their fourth tournament results appear. Others may move up as well. And there are many, many tournaments left in the academic year before the final standings come out in March.

Based on the youth and relative inexperience of this year's team we are very happy with these preliminary results. They have been working very hard and learning a lot. It is an honor to be listed in the top twenty colleges in the nation, let alone the top ten. Although only the top 30 schools are listed below, hundreds of colleges across the country compete in this the largest format of intercollegiate debate. What is nice is that all schools compete together in one large division, pitting much smaller schools like ours against much larger research universities like UCLA and Cal Berkeley. That is not always possible in other formats of intercollegiate competition.

Thanks for your continued support of PLNU Speech and Debate. As professors at PLNU please know that when students need to miss an occasional Friday class for a tournament, they are working hard (usually 10-12 hour days of competition) learning and honing important scholarly skills in an academically rigorous environment that helps open doors to graduate schools and rewarding career opportunities. None of this would be possible without your continued support. I also want to pass along my thanks to our generous and supportive alumni group, Friends of Forensics, and our current coaches who sacrifice a great deal for the team.