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January 26, 2007 > News > Rice debate team ranked third in nation after win in Denver

Rice debate team ranked third in nation after win in Denver

By Gary Johnson | Thresher staff

In the national Mile High Swing invitational tournament, the Rice Speech and Debate Team beat out 31 other colleges and universities to win first place. Prevailing at the tournament, held in Denver Jan. 11-15, placed the team third in the nation, as ranked by the National Parliamentary Debate Association. Rice debaters trail only students from Point Loma Nazarene University and Western Kentucky University in the national rankings.

The team qualified to participate in the NPDA national championships, which will be held in Colorado Springs March 22-25.

Members of the team won 6 individual awards and a total of 37 separate debates.

The competition included teams from the United States Air Force Academy, the University of California-Berkeley, Pepperdine University, Texas Tech University, the University of Oregon and Biola University.

Debater Hrishi Hari, a Jones College junior, said the tournament competition in Denver was much tougher than usual.

“Immediately, you think about these schools, and you might dismiss them because they are not as academically as strong as Rice, but other times there are a lot of people who debated for years in high school,” Hari said.

At the Mile High Swing, the tandem of Hari and Sid Richardson College junior Kirti Datla advanced to the semi-finals of Varsity Parliamentary debate. Advancing to elimination rounds in Varsity Parliamentary debate were the team of Martel College senior Priscilla Parrett and Jones junior Robert Crider and the team of Hanszen College sophomore Holly Naylor and Will Rice College junior Ted Torous.

Naylor said the team did well despite facing some of the best teams in the country.

Going into the second weekend of January, Parrett and Crider were ranked third in the nation out of 713 teams. The teams of Naylor/Torous and Hari/Datla are also ranked among the top 50 teams in the nation.

The Rice team has attended 6 tournaments this year where they competed in both parliamentary debate and 11 different individual events. They have taken first place awards at all six.

Director of Forensics David Worth said the team is as close to the national number-one ranking as it has ever been.

Assistant Director of Forensics Jeremy Grace said he is looking forward to the national championship.

“Every individual on the team is talented and multifaceted in not only debate, but also in the individual events,” Grace said.

Worth said the team has been strengthened by the performance of many freshmen. The team of Jones freshmen Aparna Bhaduri and Cathy Yang won first place in novice parliamentary debate at the team’s last tournament, held in November in Stockton, Calif.

“We are a very young team with a lot of sophomores and freshmen, but we’ve done a lot better this year,” Parrett said.

Last year, the Rice team was ranked 14th in the nation by the National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA).

Worth said it is a challenge for Rice to compete against schools with much larger teams and those that offer scholarships for debate. The Rice team is significantly smaller than the two teams currently ranked higher in the national standings. However, Worth said the team’s chance of winning the national tournament is the best it has ever been.

“It is going to take a lot of work,” he said. “We’re one of only two or three squads that can say that our students compete in individual events and debate with the most overlap. Most squads tend to concentrate on individual events or debate.”

In parliamentary debate, competitors are given a different topic to debate before their rounds and are given 15 minutes to prepare. Often, topics involve current events on foreign and domestic policy issues such as healthcare, environmental policy, taxes, the war in Iraq and the conflict in Somalia. The team prepares for tournaments by reading news, trying to predict debate topics, and conducting practice rounds.

The team will compete at the Lubbock or Leave It Swing tournament at Texas Tech Jan. 26-28.

“Lubbock will be a fairly easy tournament after this past weekend,” Hari said. “It is a local draw, [and] most likely we’ll see teams from as far as northern Arizona, but other than that it is pretty much a Texas draw.”

Members see this as preparation for the March national NPDA tournament.

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