Whitman Duo Places 11th at National Parliamentary Debate Tourney
WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Whitman College debate students Chris Gorman and Bridget Kustin placed 11th at the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence (NPTE), held last weekend in Portland, Ore.
Gorman, a junior politics major from Woodburn, Ore., and Kustin, a sophomore English major from Sherman Oaks, Calif., were among 36 of the top-ranked teams in the nation competing in the invitational tournament.
Kustin also placed 10th in individual speaker points. Judges award each participant in each debate a certain number of speaker points, based on their individual performance and contribution.
At last year's tournament, Gorman teamed with Nicholas Thomas, a Whitman senior at the time, to place 10th. Two years ago, Whitman's Todd Borden and Brant Olsen capped their senior seasons by placing fifth at the NPTE tournament.
"While our teams haven't placed quite as high the past two years, their accomplishments are still very impressive," Whitman debate coach Jim Hanson said. "It's only been the last two years that the NPTE has evolved into the de facto premier national championship tournament. We've had 35 and 36 of the very best teams at the tournament the past two years, and the field wasn't as strong prior to that."
Hanson, director of the Whitman speech/debate program for the past decade, has also served as president of the NPTE tournament for the past two years.
Gorman and Kustin will return to Portland late this month for the nation's largest season-ending tournament, sponsored by the National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA). The tournament, hosted this year by Portland State University, is expected to attract about 270 teams from around the country. At last year's tournament, Whitman's Gorman and Thomas placed 17th among 291 teams.
Whitman will have a total of four teams entered in this year's NPDA tournament. In addition to Gorman and Kustin, the other teams are junior Sam Spiegel (Vancouver, British Columbia) and sophomore Beth Pearson (Indianola, Ind.), first-year students Rob Olsen (Helena, Mont.) and Lydia Eberly (Spokane, Wash.), and sophomore Scott Thompson (Sumner, Wash.) and senior Brian Ward (Clackamas, Ore.).
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