Placerville Debaters Depart for Lincoln-Douglas & Team Policy debate competition hosted by Phi Rho Pi in Portland Oregon. Team Policy debate requires an active brain and germane responses to make a reasoned decision and to be able to convince a reasoned person of a reasoned conclusion.
(Placerville, Calif) – Local debate team of Sherilyn Lum-Alarcon and Lisa Stark-Hughes take top awards at national levels. The Folsom Lake College Debate Team is ranked 2nd for tiebreaker points and 5th overall in points for community colleges nationwide. The team has recently defeated many teams including those from the academic and debate luminaries of CSU Sac, Cal Poly SLO, and SF State to win the Paul Winters Invitational hosted by the University of the Pacific.
The University of the Pacific’s Paul Winters Invitational was an IE/NFA LD/NPDA/CEDA tournament hosted on the UOP campus offering six preliminary rounds for CEDA debate! "The National Parliamentary Debate Association Championship is one of the biggest debate tournaments in the country and is on par with the Super Bowl or the Indianapolis 500 in the world of speech and debate" said Marlin Bates, speech and debate coach at Pacific.
Cross Examination Debate Association, CEDA is now the primary national association promoting policy topic intercollegiate academic debate. In cooperation with the National Debate Tournament Committee and the American Debate Association, CEDA formulates the annual intercollegiate policy debate topic used in tournament competition throughout the nation. The CEDA tournament is an intercollegiate event open to any team that wants to attend.
The CEDA Lincoln-Douglas format shall be:
Affirmative Constructive 8 minutes; Negative Cross-Examination 3 minutes;
Negative Constructive 12 minutes; Affirmative Cross-Examination 3 minutes;
First Affirmative Rebuttal 6 minutes; Negative Rebuttal 6 minutes;
Second Affirmative Rebuttal 3 minutes.
Each speaker shall be allowed a total of six (6) minutes preparation time. Teams debate Affirmative or Negative based on a random drawing.
The success of the Folsom Lake Debate Team has come as a surprise to many as it is the first year of an intercollegiate debate program at FLC. All of the coaches are volunteers and the team is sponsored through private contributions only. This is especially irritating to the cross-town rivals from Los Rios College who has a well established and funded program, but has been unable to defeat the upstarts from El Dorado County.
Although the program and team members are new, the experience of both the coaching and the team members are well know. Coach Jeremy Morioka is an alumni of Kansas State’s renowned debate program. Lisa Starke-Hughes is a mother of six including an 18 month old, award recipient of “USA TODAY's 2009 All-USA Community College Academic Team”, and is a consultant for Walker Business Supplies of Placerville. Sherilyn Lum-Alarcon is a Realtor with Folsom Lake Realty, the chair of the EDCAR Political Affairs committee, former District Director for Soroptimist, and a graduate of the EDC Chamber’s “Leadership El Dorado” program. Both of these ladies are “re-entry” students that bring a wealth of real world experience to the intercollegiate debate program.
Additional team members, coaches, and advisors include: Daniel Christian, Tomas Stephenson, Corrina Ward, Danielle Birdsall, assistant coach Autumn Valerio, and program founder K.C. Boylan. The program is available to students that take Communications 373, Forensics Laboratory at Folsom Lake College.
“Participation in debate develops skills needed for civic responsibility: developing informed decisions and expressing them effectively” explains coach Morioka.
All cost of the program has been funded privately. Financial contributors include: the coaches; James Brunello, Attorney, El Dorado Hills; John Bailey, Executive Director, El Dorado County Bar Association, Placerville; Andrea Howard, Parker Development Company, El Dorado Hills; The Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center, El Dorado Hills; the community service website, Placerville.Info.
The 2009 Phi Rho Pi National Tournament will be held in Portland, OR at the Marriott Waterfront from April 6-12. The banquet is scheduled for Monday, April 6 and the award ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, April 12. Competition rules available online at: http://www.phirhopi.org/.
If you have tournament questions, please contact the tournament director, Duane Fish at duane.fish@northwestcollege.edu, 307-754-6024.
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