Concordia Free at Concordia University Irvine

This past weekend Point Loma’s Speech and Debate Team had its strongest showing of the year, winning First Place in Debate Sweepstakes, and Second Place in Over All Sweepstakes at a tournament  expertly hosted by Concordia University Irvine and Irvine Valley College.  Both host schools pulled themselves Sweepstakes consideration, but as I understand it that would not have affected our award order at this particular tournament, at least on the debate end.  Actual aggregative school wide point totals were not available though to confirm this as of the time this note was generated. 

It is hoped that such a showing will help bolster our national standings in the year long race.  We were ranked at 11th in the nation at the end of the Fall.  We are very excited to have so many of our strong senior debaters return from their Fall study abroad experiences.  Their contributions have already been significant.  Listed below are some of the highlights.

Concordia Free: January 21, 2012 – January 22, 2012 at Concordia University Irvine

• Point Loma wins First Place in Debate Sweepstakes, and Second Place Overall Sweepstakes  for  Individual Events and Debate.
• Point Loma had half of the 8 Open Division Parliamentary Debate teams in the Quarter Final Round.
• Two of those teams advance to the Semi Finals, and each team won its respective round leading to a close out finals with both PLNU teams as Co Champions.
• Walk on Spring Transfer student Daniel Robert Spencer was placed in Junior Division, rather than Novice for his first college tournament ever, and still managed to advance to the

Quarter finals with partner Sam Mercaldo, and to win a 6th Place Speaker Award  in this division.

Parliamentary Debate Team Awards

Senior 

McKayla Carpenter and Sydney Awakuni (3/1) Co-Champions
Brook Rakes and Andrew Schalin (3/1) Co-Champions
Haley Courtney and Kayla Cook (4/0) Quarter Finalists
Kasey Graves and Frank Daniel (3/1) Quarter Finalists
               

 Junior
Stefanie Haas and Emily Shaffer (4/0) Semifinalists
Sam Mercaldo and Daniel Robert Spencer (2/2) Quarter Finalists

Parliamentary Debate Speaker Awards:

Senior
4th Barbara Gausewitz -
5th Sydney Awakuni -
Junior                  
6th Daniel Robert Spencer
8th Stephanie Haas

NFA Lincoln Douglass Debate Open Division
Michelle Diaz – Quarter Finalist
Sydney Awakuni – Quarter Finalist
McKayla Carpenter – Quarter Finalist

Individual Events
Andrew Schalin -  Open Extemp   2nd Place
Hailey Courtney – Open Poetry  5th Place
Barbara Gausewitz – Open Impromptu 5th Place