The University of the Pacific debate team has just concluded their season of debate at the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence (NPTE) and the National Parliamentary Debate Associations (NPDA) national tournament In Colorado. Pacific, which has regularly been finishing in the top five schools in the nation, has been working very hard leading up to the tournament itself. The team was accompanied by Director of Forensics Steven Farias and Assistant Coaches Reed Ramsey and Jonathan Bruce. This year was a year full of records for the University of the Pacific. For the first time, Pacific qualified 4 teams to the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence. Those teams were Dallas Phillips and Paul Villa, Noreen Javed and Kayla Gerdes, Melissa Munoz and Ericka Jauregui, and Dom Lesaca and Megan Chatelain. All of these teams worked extremely hard in preparing for these tournaments, and that hard work ended up paying off.

The first of the national tournaments was the NPTE. This tournament was hosted by Colorado State University-Pueblo and lasted from March 19^th through the 21^st. The NPTE is different than most other tournaments in that teams receive the resolutions a month in advance to prepare cases for the tournament. This tournament also offers cross-examination after speeches, which is not typical in parliamentary debate. Only 23 schools and 50 teams would be competing at the NPTE, which made for a very competitive tournament. Pacific had two teams advance into out rounds: Gerdes, Javed and Villa, Phillips. After a hard set of out rounds, Gerdes and Javed received 30^th place and Villa and Phillips received 6^th place. Even though not all of Pacific’s teams broke to the out rounds, they all worked very hard to support each other in terms of file writing. This tournament gave Pacific a significant amount of momentum going into the final national tournament of NPDA.

The NPDA was hosted by Colorado College and took place from March 23 to the 26^th. Collegiate parliamentary debate, specifically NPDA, is the largest debate organization in the United States with upwards of 150 schools present to compete. This year’s tournament had 41 schools and 143 teams entered, which made the pool very diverse. After 8 grueling preliminary rounds, Pacific’s PV (Phillips, Villa) and GJ (Gerdes, Javed) broke to out rounds. Pacific GJ made it to Octafinals, whereas Pacific PV made it all the way to the semifinal round. This was the best showing at the NPDA Pacific has had in decades. Pacific wasn't the only school breaking records at this year’s NPDA; Washburn University ended up closing out the final round, which has never been accomplished before.

On top of the individual teams' success, Pacific received 7^th place in season-long sweepstakes and received 3^rd place for tournament sweepstakes. All in all, Pacific’s debate team performed at their peak ability and this year’s hard work has paid off. Lastly, Pacific could not have been as successful as they were without the help from people in the community. Teams who dropped in out rounds came to Pacific’s aid in terms of preparation time. University of Oregon, El Camino, Point Loma, University of Utah, and other folks tremendously helped Pacific succeed at this tournament. This year’s strong finish shows great potential for next year’s squad. Only one member of Pacific's team will be graduating this year-- Noreen Javed-- but will retain the majority of its competitors. Now it is time for Pacific to rest up and get back to work so that they can continue to exceed expectations.