Debate team national champs
April 13, 2006
The debate team for the South Orange County Community College District won the national championship for community colleges in the National Parliamentary Debate Association competition on March 27 at Oregon State University. This is the fifth consecutive year that the team has won the two-year title.
The team, which is made up of students and coaches from Irvine Valley and Saddleback Colleges, includes four volunteer coaches, themselves former squad members who know the strategies that have made the team successful.
Last month, the team took second-place in the overall sweepstakes at the California Community College Forensics Association tournament in Concord.
Two of the coaches, IVC alums Nicolette Ward and Jay Arntson, recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. The others, John Lewellen and Bill Eddy, will graduate next year.
According to Speech and Debate Coach Gary Rybold, the team couldn’t have succeeded without the help of the volunteer coaches.
“The team this year has been very special. Over 30 debaters have competed for us this season, and to be able to reach the excellence we experienced, we needed to have a lot of practices with our volunteer coaches and IVC Coach Edwin Tiongson,” said Rybold.
Tiongson, now an assistant professor at the college, is also a former debate team student.
The winning squad, Jen Spradley, Brittany Sedey, Rock Bower, and Gene Minko, beat the second-place team, Minnesota’s Century College, by just one point.
Spradley and Sedey made it to the elimination rounds and advanced farther than any other community college team. Their record, combined with Bower and Minko, was enough to put the SOCCCD over the top.
Also competing were SOCCCD team members Karen Wright and her partner Jasmine Wang, a debater from China who is touring the U.S. as part of the Chinese team.
The SOCCCD team competed at 15 tournaments this year, including the international tournament in Xi’an, China. At the end of the debate season, each school is awarded points for its best four tournaments. This year, with a squad deep in talent, 17 individual debaters ultimately contributed points to help the district team take the national title.