Jags Roar (or Argue) to Victory in National Debate Tournament
Our middle school debaters triumphed in an important national tournament on Saturday, which included 360 debaters from 47 schools in 10 leagues. Competition was fierce for the New Roads second-year team as they argued against teams from schools with long-standing debate programs like Brentwood, Marlborough, Harvard-Westlake, and Polytechnic.
After a long day of debating resolutions, five teams were undefeated (Brentwood, Chaminade, last year’s champion Colina, Pegasus and New Roads). The New Roads and Pegasus teams had the highest speaker points – and our team was the top scorer going into the final round – and they faced off for a single final round! The New Roads team drew the short straw, debating the more difficult proposition side of the topic “Whether Antonin Scalia’s career as a Supreme Court Justice did more good than harm,” and ended the tournament in second place in a 2-1 split decision!
Tournament Director John Meany, Director of Forensics at Claremont McKenna College and creator of the California Parliamentary debate format, saluted New Roads for its extraordinary achievement in its second year of competition. Team coach and Chair of the Board of Trustees Mark Windham recounts the tournament’s many successes: “We would have gone home proud with our... won loss record of 70% from our four strong teams. Ella Rose, Sean Grey and Nolan Windham securing at 15th place win was tremendous. But to have an undefeated team, with very high points, and two of the debaters winning the second and third place for individual speaker awards and making the final round – just thrills me! Hooray for all and a standing ovation for finalists Carolina Salas, Frank Gerolmo (3rd place speaker) and Ben Wasson (2nd place speaker)!”
Our debaters clearly made the case that they have command over one of the tools that will help them realize one of the aims of our Statement of Philosophy: “effective personal, social, political and moral participation.”
Go Jags!!
New Roads School is a college preparatory K-12 private independent school in Santa Monica, CA, serving over 514 elementary school, middle school and high school children from the greater Los Angeles area. New Roads School provides an inspired educational program from which an authentically diverse student population, mirroring the rich diversity of Los Angeles, develops a personal dedication to learning, a respect for independent thinking, and an expanding curiosity about the world and its people.
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS New Roads School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.