Mary Washington Starts Strong – (Georgia State, Kentucky and Richmond)

The Mary Washington debate team resumed its winning tradition with a great start to the 2007-2008 debate season. The topic of debate this year is whether the United States federal government should increase its constructive engagement with the Middle East by increasing either foreign assistance or by offering a security guarantee.

At the first tournament of the year, Mary Washington sent two teams to compete at the Georgia State University, which took place from September 22^nd to the 24^th. The two teams that competed were Matt Struth (Jr.) and Kevin Kallmyer (So.), and also Nick Ryan (Sr.) and myself, Sean Jansen (Sr.). Nick and I finished the tournament with a record of 4 wins and 4 losses while Matt and Kevin finished with the preliminary rounds with 5 wins and 3 losses. Due to their success, Matt and Kevin advanced to the elimination rounds at this prestigious tournament for the first time in Mary Washington history.

After opening the season with a quality showing, Matt and Kevin continued their success at the University of Kentucky where they again finished with a 5-3 record and only narrowly missing qualification for elimination rounds. Although, they did not qualify for the elim rounds, it has still been a great start for two of our most promising debaters.

The third tournament of the year took place last weekend at the University of Richmond. The Richmond debate tournament was the first tournament of the year for several of our debate teams including many novice members who joined the team in September. Mary Washington had a total of eight teams competing in the tournament in the Novice, Junior Varsity and Varsity divisions. In the novice division, Mary Washington sent nine debaters that made up five teams; our teams consisted of Rachael Adkisson & Ryan Lott, Brett Kube & Sean Slattery, Nathaniel Delano & Terrell Taylor, Hilary Balbeaith & Ben Saunders and finally Eric Halsey who competed with another novice from the Clarion University. All of the teams competed well and had a great showing for their first tournament. The team of Nathaniel Delano & Terrell Taylor reached the elimination rounds with a record of 4 wins and 3 losses which is very impressive for a team that was facing competition who had several tournaments experience.

In the other two divisions, Mary Washington sent three other teams to compete. In the Junior Varsity division, the team of Amanda Gardner and Farrah Tek had a record of four wins and four losses barely missing elimination rounds. In the Varsity division, the Eagles sent two teams. The first consisted of Jason Martin (Jr.) and his up and coming freshman partner Andrew Squires. Jason and Andrew had a record of 4 wins and 4 losses and also missed elimination rounds based on speaker points. The team of Nick Ryan and I, finished the prelim rounds with a record of 7 wins and 1 loss, defeating teams from Georgetown, Miami (Fla), and the Pittsburgh and achieving the top seed in the tournament. In the elimination rounds of the tournament, we defeated four consecutive teams, two from the University of Towson, one from George Mason and in the final round of the tournament, we defeat Harvard University. The win against Harvard University was a close round in which 2 judges voted for us and 1 judge voted for Harvard. This round avenged our only previous loss in the tournament. For Nick, he has won the tournament for the second consecutive year. Nick received an award for being the 2^nd best speaker at the tournament and I received one for being the 3^rd best speaker out of the other 68 varsity competitors. Overall, the tournament was a great success at all levels. We hope to keep the momentum going as we continue our season.

Farrah and Amanda prepare for Richmond in a practice debate

Jason Working Hard on a Saturday