A young Â鶹¹û¶³ debate team is starting the season in high fashion. In their first competiton of the year, junior varsity debaters Kaitlin Defoor and Robert Walker brought home top honors from a tournament hosted by Georgia State University Sept. 17-20.
Defoor, a sophomore, and Walker, a freshman, defeated a University of Louisiana Lafayette team on a 3-0 decision in the final round. The pair earlier bested Vanderbilt University in a 3-0 decision in the semi-final round and University of South Florida-St. Petersburg in a 3-0 decision in the quarter final. They won five of six preliminary rounds to qualify for the final rounds.
“Although Â鶹¹û¶³ has been to the finals in junior varsity in previous years,” said debate coach Abi Williams, “this is the first time in recent memory that we’ve had a team win the tournament.”
Both debaters were cited individually. Walker, a psychology major from Bonaire, Ga., was named second place over all speaker. Defoor, a political science major from Resaca, Ga., was named fifth place speaker.
Also in junior varsity completion, freshmen Garrett Vande Kamp and Matt Sessions, in their first-ever college debate, advanced to the quarter-final round before losing a close 2-1 decision to a University of Louisiana Lafayette team.
Â鶹¹û¶³ varsity debaters Logan Gramzinski and Dan Bagwell finished preliminary rounds as the 22nd seed out of 170 competing teams. They were defeated in an elimination round by a top 25 team from the University of Georgia.