Beach Forensics Starts Season With A Splash!

Beach Forensics competed at the Owen L. Coon Memorial Debates at Northwestern last weekend. This was the season opener for our Policy Debate squad. The team of Diego Flores (Senior, Political Science) and Curtis Ortega (Sophomore, Africana Studies) finished the preliminary debates with an undefeated record and as the second seed out of 122 teams. The duo was one tenth of one speaker point away from securing the first seed.

Flores and Ortega secured victories over Binghamton, University of Wyoming, University of Kansas, Kentucky University, University of Texas Austin, Wichita State University, University of Iowa, and Emory. They were recognized as the 4^th and 11^th place overall speakers in a pool of 244 competitors. They finished as Quarterfinalists (5^th place overall) after being defeated by Harvard on a close 2-1 decision.

This week Flores and Ortega will be competing at the Run for the Roses Round Robin at Kentucky University, a tournament that only the top 7 duos in the nation are invited to, followed by the J. W. Patterson Debates at Kentucky University with a field of 150 teams. This marks the first time in school history that CSULB has been invited to the prestigious round robin. At the same time, Beach Forensics will welcome 5,000 guests to our campus for the 30^th annual Jack Howe Memorial Invitational, one of the largest competitive speech and debate tournaments worldwide.

Stay tuned for more updates. GO BEACH!