Debate team wins NPDA tournament
By HELENA PAYNE
Assistant News Editor
Recently, the Notre Dame debate team topped 57 teams of collegiate debaters in the National Parliamentary Debate Association's national tournament placing first and sending three teams to the eliminating rounds.
Notre Dame sent a total of five teams to the national tournament, which took place Sept. 28 and 29 at Truman State University in Oregon.
Beating Central Missouri State University in the final round on a 5-0 decision to become tournament champions was the team of senior Rachel Smith and sophomore Mary Komperda.
"That was the tournament that Notre Dame has done the best at ever," said Komperda.
The tournament, according to team members was a succession of unexpected events. The winning pair of Smith and Komperda had never debated together before, but the two pooled together their research to debate on the topic of faith-based prisons.
In addition, Smith, a seasoned debater entering her fourth year at Notre Dame, had debated against the team from Central Missouri State twice before and lost both times.
"It was probably the most tense round I've ever done," Smith said.
In addition to being fairly new partners, Smith and Komperda were thrust into their final round debate, which began two hours earlier than it was scheduled.
The winning team argued for faith-based prisons saying that they would be beneficial because of their focus on rehabilitation as opposed to the poor living conditions of public prisons.
"It really was a team effort. We were really surprised, obviously, that we did so well, but our styles ended up working very well together," said Komperda.
After six preliminary rounds, three of the Notre Dame teams advanced to the "sweet 16" rounds.
One of the teams consisted of seniors Will McDonald and Mark Styczynski who made it to the semifinal round.
"It felt very strange," said McDonald of Notre Dame's success. "I didn't really think things were going that well and I looked up and saw we had three teams in the sweet 16, and I was like, `Well, maybe it'll be our lucky day after all.'"
Other honors went to Styczynski and Gallo who both won top-10 speaker awards out of 114 debaters. Smith, McDonald, Victoria Fetterman and Michelle Petersen also finished in the top 25.
"The main reason why anybody did good is because we work together," said McDonald. "Everyone one was very pleasantly surprised by Rachel (Smith) and Mary (Komperda) winning the tournament because they had never been partners before."
According to McDonald, the team's work occurs not as much in the tournament as before it when the team members have practice rounds and research potential debate topics. Four of the team members also went to a debate camp in Oregon.
"We try to figure out who our top competitors will be and figure out ways to beat them," said McDonald. "It's usually pretty easy because we're smarter than them, but we're smarter because we work together."
The team's coach is law student Kate Huetteman who she is often assisted by graduate student Joe Foy.
The debate team's next tournament is Oct. 26 at Colorado College.
All News Stories for Tuesday, October 16, 2001
