Pacific University Speech and Debate Wins Awards

The Pacific University Speech and Debate Team started the year off strong, picking up five awards at the Steve Hunt Classic, a tournament held at Lewis & Clark College.

The tournament, which ran Oct. 13-15, brought together 42 schools representing 11 states. With more than 600 entries, it is one of the largest tournaments on the west coast.

Freshman Christiana Warner reached semifinals in Junior IPDA debate, a one-on-one debate style. With topics ranging from post-modernism and equal pay in men and women’s professional sports, Warner '21 cruised to a 5-1 preliminary round record before advancing to elimination rounds.

Sophomore Lillian Wolfe reached quarterfinals in Novice IPDA debate after earning a 4-2 record in preliminary rounds. Wolfe ’20 also was the 8th overall speaker in Novice IPDA, out of more than 30 other speakers in the division.

Freshman Zoë Kim-Maskell earned a fourth-place spot in Novice Prose finals before returning to Pacific to sing in the Choral Concert on Friday night. Kim-Maskell ’21 was also the Top Novice speaker in Poetry Interpretation.

Sophomore Kia Addison ’20 placed 5th in informative speaking with a speech exploring the largest refugee camps in the world.

The Speech and Debate Team is in a unique position this year with no seniors and a majority of underclassmen on the team. However, this young team has plenty of talent and is off to a great start! Other team members competing at the Steve Hunt Classic included Olivia Rockwood ’21, Hunter Buen ’21, Hanin Najjar ’21, Avery Beckius ’21, Sagnik Bhadra ’21, Tera Cafro ’20, Brooke Roth ’19, and Ilana Freeman ’19.

The next tournament for Boxer Speech and Debate is the Whitworth-McPherson Classic is this weekend (Oct. 21-22) at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA. 

Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017