Speech and Debate Team Captures Multiple Awards at the Winter at the Beach Tournament
Fullerton College Speech & Debate was outstanding at their first competition of the spring semester! Nine students brought home a total of ten awards from the Winter at the Beach tournament hosted by CSU Long Beach. The tournament brought to Southern California some of the best minds from CSU Fullerton, California Baptist University, Weber State University in Utah, and dozens of other community colleges and universities.
Top honors go to the team of Evan Jensen and Jennifer Perry who came back to the hornet hive as tournament champions in novice policy debate! Perry is a Communication Studies major who hopes to continue debating while pursuing a Bachelor of Arts after she transfers to her #1 pick, CSU Fullerton. Jensen is an economics major who plans to practice law. Both students devoted a substantial amount of time to prepare which definitely paid off.
“Winning against teams who have more experience is thrilling”, says Jensen, “More importantly, each win and loss is a learning opportunity for what to improve.”
Speech and debate is a means of intellectual growth; it’s not about the trophies – although the debate team is happy to win them – speech and debate is about the educational journey.
“The decision to join debate,” says Jennifer, “was probably the best decision I have made for myself because it helped me recognize my potential and I was able to push through the boundaries I had set for myself regarding my education.”
Pushing to the next level requires hard work and dedication, but it’s something any student at Fullerton College can accomplish.
Additional Fullerton College speech and debate awards included: third place JV policy debate team, Harut Kejejyan and Natalie Sutka; fifth place varsity persuasion and informative speaking, Britton Lee, and fifth place program of oral interpretation, Akayla Cadena.
Speech and debate students are contributing to the tough, but necessary conversations. Fullerton College congratulates them on an excellent showing. Go Hornets!
The entire team resumes competition again on Feb. 23 to 25 at the Pacific Southwest Collegiate Forensics Association Spring Championships tournament hosted by CSU Long Beach. The Fullerton College Speech and Debate team is coached by Jeanette Rodriguez, Jeff Samano and Toni Nielson.
