Debate team members place at tournament
The 11-member USU Debate Team’s parliamentary debate partners placed third out of 21 teams at a tournament at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls last weekend.
Trevor Linderman and Jane McBride won five preliminary rounds and a quarter-final round before losing in the semi-finals to Linfield College. Parliamentary debate requires pairs of debaters to prepare an argument in 15 minutes on an assigned topic and position.
“This is a great way to use this tournament in preparation for our conference tournaments,” said debate coach Tom Worthen. “We’re the reigning champs for two years running in our conference. We’re a young team and we compete against 30 other universities and win.”
Other awards taken by the team included second place by a novice pair made up of Natalie Cook of USU and Jake Nutsch of the College of Southern Idaho. Eric Peatross took second in persuasive speaking, and Di Lewis and Jane McBride received honorable mentions in prose and informative speaking, respectively.
The debate team is only two years old and is completely volunteer. Some other schools pay debate coaches and even award debate scholarships. USU’s debate conference encompasses the Northwestern states.
“It’s exciting to go in as a non-budgeted team with volunteer students and coach and be consistently competitive and win the conference,” Worthen said.
Linderman, a junior majoring in public relations, said, “Debate is an excellent exercise for the mind, and associating myself with the high class members of debate is both an experience I enjoy and learn from.”
For more information about the debate team, contact Tom Worthen at drtom@poeticpower.com.
-ella@cc.usu.edu