The Advance

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Adriene Similton KWU debaters Steve Johnston and Noah Shook (above) paired up Wednesday against KSAL Friendly Fire host Clark Sanders and retired Baylor, Dartmouth, Iowa and Augustana debate coach David Rhaesa (below). The debate was the second in a series titled "Issues & Advocacy." The resolution for the debate was: This House should overturn Roe versus Wade.

The Kansas Wesleyan Debate and Forensics team traveled to Barton County Community
college to participate in the state tournament on Feb. 15 and 16.
The team faired well against the intense competition from K-State and other schools of Kansas.

Kansas Wesleyan placed third overall in the KASSIE portion of the tournament. KASSIE is the forensicsoriented portion of the two day tournament.

There was a Wesleyan close out in the debate portion of the tournament, known as KASPER.
Noah Shook and Steve Johnston climbed up the tough portion of the bracket hitting some of Kansas' best parliamentary debate teams.
In finals they went up against Sterling College's team with the best record highly ranked, JD Smith and Emily Graham.
Eric Arganbright and John Mikolajcik,
who are currently rated in the top 50 debate teams in the nation, also hit some intense competition.

With the two Wesleyan teams advancing in semi-finals, it made for a Coyote close out and a first place debate sweeps for the team.
Also participating was novis newcomer
Justin Morse and his partner. The two provided sweepstakes points for the team, as well as veterans Adriene Similiton and Jeriah Forbes. This was Similton's first return to parliamentarydebate in a almost a year.

Coach Gary Harmon said, "I thought it went really well; we showed our dominance in debate, which was encouraging, and [it was]something we knew we had."

Harmon also added for the individual
events, "We had lots of different people doing well in IEs, but we were a little disappointed in the third place overall; but, that's still okay because it was out of 13 schools and we were only four points away from second place."

The KASSIE portion of the tournament
also provided success to the Wesleyan team. Several individuals broke into finals:

Steve Sommerville received 5th with his POI, Danielle Wieden received third with her poetry, Adriene Similton placed second in POI, Jeriah Forbes placed third with his informative speech and fourth in communication analysis, Shawna Robbins made it to sixth with her DI, Shook placed sixth in extemp and Steve Johnston placed second also in extemporaneous speaking. Overall, the squad ranked third in the forensics portion and first in the debate portion as Two K-dub teams met in the finals.

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