News

Maraquin, Long triumph in debate tournament

Kat Simonelli
Managing Editor
Thandi Ware
Assistant Arts Editor

Junior biology majors Kandin Maraquin and Tanner Long debated through six preliminary rounds, broke to semi-finals and went on to take the final round of the Point Loma Nazarene debate competition Sunday in San Diego.

Maraquin and Long came out of the preliminary rounds as the top team of the tournament.

“It feels very satisfying to know that we were up against a lot of bigger schools like USC and UCLA, schools that have more name recognition, so to beat them was cool,” Maraquin said.

The duo debated against University of Southern California, the United States Air Force Academy and the Claremont Colleges in the final round.

“We felt pretty confident in our round, we felt like the one team to beat was the team from Claremont,” Long said. “We really like the way they speak… they speak with a lot of confidence, and we figured that if we could just outperform them then we’d win and we knew, I think, before the round was over that we’d won.”

Along with being the top team of the tournament, Maraquin and Long were also scored as the top two speakers with only one speaker point separating the two, respectively.

“There’s just a little bit of friendly competition,” Long said. “It was kind of funny when we found out that the difference was so small, and it could have been either of us, but definitely no bad blood.”

In total, La Verne entered four teams and three judges, who debated against USC, UCLA, Beijing University, Point Loma, the Air Force Academy, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the Claremont Colleges and Pepperdine.

The teams debate about current economic and environmental issues of global concern and must keep up with current events in the news.

“We know the strategy, we know the structure, we know other schools but do we know enough information that convinces the judges that we’re the smart ones,” director of forensics Rob Ruiz said.

La Verne entered four separate teams into the Point Loma tournament, however only one was able to break through to the semi-finals.

“I’m looking for more teams to advance, I think it’s possible,” Ruiz said.

He said the debate team will be working toward its goal of winning the U.S. Nationals held at Morehouse College in Atlana, Georgia in April.

The debate team will travel to San Luis Obispo in March and are looking forward to compete against teams from Mexico, Venezuela and other American schools at its first Spanish-speaking tournament in Jamaica in March as well.

Kat Simonelli can be reached at kathryn.simonelli@laverne.edu.

Thandi Ware can be reached at thandiwe.ware@laverne.edu.

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