Tournamet Results

Friends,

Please accept my apologies for getting you this information so late. I have been on the road this past two weeks attending two national championships (one in Oregon and one in Florida) and defending my dissertation in Virginia. Here are the results of the two National Championships.

National Parliamentary Debate Association Championships at Oregon State University.

Two PLNU teams earned a 6/2 win loss record and advanced to the elimination rounds. Both advanced to the second elimination round before being eliminated. Unfortunately we were on the side of the resolution that lost 75% of the decisions during this round. Most topics were a little better balanced, some even coming out with a 50% win/loss split of the nearly 300 teams competing. Congratulations to Andrew Hoag and Griffith Vertican, and to Kevin Davis and Ben Kautzer for their fine showing at this tournament. All of the other Point Loma teams did well also. Jordan Cherry and Elly Garner came within one victory in their eight rounds of preliminary competition of advancing to the elimination rounds.

The Pt Loma team ended up in 20th place for the tournament sweepstakes and we ended the year in 24th place in the nation for the year long sweepstakes race amongst the hundreds competing nation wide. Unfortunately the organization chose this year to count novice and junior contributions as worth half the amount that seniors count. That practice has already been changed for next year. This year especially that policy hurt us as we had so many novice and junior teams, and so few pure senior teams.

American Forensics Association - National Individual Events Tournament Championship Tournament at the University of Florida

Griffith Vertican qualified for six different events for this prestigious National Championship Tournament. He competed in three preliminary rounds in each of the following events: Persuasion, Informative, Impromptu, Extemporaneous, Communication Analysis, and Speech to Entertain. Although he did quite well in many of these events, he did not quite make the break to the quarterfinals of this very difficult tournament.

For some reason, the locals there in Gainesville Florida were a little more focused on their team winning the NCAA Basketball Championship than hosting the Individual Events National Championship. But a good time was had by all. Go Gators. :-)

Thanks for your support of Pt Loma Forensics through out the year. We are already looking forward to next year. I will be back from sabbatical and finished with the dissertation, and the team has learned a great deal from this year for next year. We are also looking at a terrific group of incoming recruits. Please recommend any strong prospects from your classes to me. We are an interdisciplinary co-curricular activity.