Tournament Results

The Tulane University Debate Team closed out its intercollegiate season with a trip to the NPDA National Championships at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. The three-day event featured 128 of the best teams from across the country, including three partnerships from Tulane. The Green Wave was represented by Claire Kueffner & Madison Sullivan, Christopher Hoffler & Matthew Weber, and Ren Allen & Jeremy Evans.

All three teams opened their Nationals campaign with a first-round win, including Hoffler & Weber defeating the 15th ranked pair in the country, a squad from the University of Nevada. Weber was awarded a perfect score of 30 in the round. Kueffner & Sullivan, meanwhile, went on to open the tournament 3-0 through the first three contests. And despite starting the tournament 1-4 through five rounds, first-year debaters Allen & Evans stormed back for three straight wins on Sunday to close their tournament at .500, with a 4-4 record.

Late Sunday, focus for the team centered around Kueffner & Sullivan, who had earned a 4-3 record heading into round 8, making it a true “bubble” round. If the won, they would break and if not, not. After an intense Opp round against Point Loma Nazarene, Claire & Madison emerged victorious and clinched the 24th seed in the break of 47 teams who earned a 5-3 record or better and a trip to partial triple-octofinals.

Their triple-octo was an Opp matchup with one of the host teams from Lewis & Clark, which they carried on a 2-1 decision. This advanced them to the last round of the night, a Gov debate against a Texas Tech team ranked 9th after preliminary competition and 8th overall in the seasonal rankings.

The round was fast and intense, featuring a moving PMC from Kueffner, intense refutation from Sullivan in MGC, and a brilliant Kueffner PMR that Coach Storey Clayton described as the best speech he’s ever seen from a Tulane debater. However, the Texas Tech team responded with three excellent speeches of their own and advanced on a 2-1 decision. The round was a true showcase from all four speakers of what debate can be.

The break was the third straight at NPDA Nationals for Tulane, who reached triple-octofinals in 2016 and quarterfinals for a team including Kueffner last year. This makes Tulane one of just 14 programs that have reached the elimination rounds in 2016, 2017, and 2018, alongside Concordia, El Camino, Lewis & Clark, Mercer, Nevada, Oregon, Pacific, Rice, Texas Tech, Utah, Washburn, Western Washington, and William Jewell. Of those programs, just eight, including Tulane, have been in the double-octofinal round each of the last two years (along with Concordia, Lewis & Clark, Oregon, Pacific, Texas Tech, Washburn, and Western Washington). This is some incredibly elite company for Tulane’s 8-year-old program to be keeping pace with.

Additionally, the team as a whole, across all three partnerships, went .500, finishing with a 12-12 record in preliminary rounds and a 1-1 record in outs. Complete results of the tournament can be found here.

Here are the awards Tulane earned at NPDA Nationals:
Tulane University: 20th Sweepstakes
Claire Kueffner & Madison Sullivan: 23rd Team
Claire Kueffner: 23rd Speaker

The future looks bright for Tulane as just one senior is graduating from a team which also carries no juniors, meaning nearly the entire squad should return for the next two years. Meanwhile, senior Claire Kueffner is graduating as the most decorated debater in Tulane’s team history, having won four elimination rounds at Nationals and four regular season tournaments, alongside a host of speaker awards. She is planning to attend law school next fall.

This year has featured perhaps the best class of novice debaters ever recruited by Tulane Debate. Last weekend, this novice class demonstrated their prowess with a sterling performance at Novice Nationals at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Two of Tulane’s four teams broke to quarterfinals, with the partnerships of Uma Kumar-Montei & Quinn Burke and Madison Sullivan & Claire Wynne reaching elimination rounds. Both pairs won their quarterfinal matchups, advancing to the final four. Sullivan & Wynne dropped to a team from Rollins, but Kumar-Montei & Burke went on to avenge this loss by beating that team in the final to win the tournament!

Here are the official results to our knowledge at this point – we presume there were also speaker awards, but those have yet to be announced (this post will be updated if and when speaker awards are released):
Uma Kumar-Montei & Quinn Burke – Champions
Madison Sullivan & Claire Wynne – Semifinalists

Tulane Debate will close out one of its most successful seasons in history in two weekends at NPDA Nationals at the College of Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon. Three teams will be representing Tulane there. You can support Tulane Debate and our trip to Nationals!

The Tulane University Debate Team spent last weekend at Carson-Newman University, home of the Tennessee Porch Swing speech and debate tournament, co-hosted by Belmont University. Three teams represented Tulane and all three broke to out-rounds, two in the novice division and one in varsity.

Ren Allen & Jeremy Evans won their novice quarterfinal and semifinal en route to a second place overall finish. On the varsity side, Matthew Weber & Christopher Hoffler dropped a narrow decision in finals to also finish second overall. The combined performances of all three teams, along with three speaker awards, combined to give Tulane the overall Sweepstakes award, representing the best school performance at the tournament.

Here’s the full list of official awards that Tulane earned at the Tennessee Porch Swing:
Tulane University – Sweepstakes Champion
Matthew Weber & Christopher Hoffler – 2nd Varsity Team
Matthew Weber – Top Varsity Speaker
Christopher Hoffler – 6th Varsity Speaker
Ren Allen & Jeremy Evans – 2nd Novice Team
Madison Sullivan & Claire Wynne – 5th Novice Team
Ren Allen – 3rd Novice Speaker

This tournament completes Tulane’s intercollegiate competitions for the semester, with Tulane finishing 1st or 2nd at all three tournaments attended. Tulane will open the spring semester by hosting the annual Carnival Classic on January 26-27, 2018. All NPDA schools are invited to attend!

The Tulane University Debate Team won its second tournament in as many tries this year, with first-year debaters Ren Allen and Jeremy Evans prevailing in varsity in their first NPDA competitions ever. The duo both missed the earlier Morehouse College tournament but made up for lost time by winning the Bayou City Swing Tournament at San Jacinto College in Houston.

Allen and Evans broke to varsity quarterfinals alongside teammates Claire Kueffner and Madison Sullivan. Both teams won their quarterfinals, setting up a match between the two in semifinals. As the higher seed, Allen and Evans advanced to finals without a round. After some administrative confusion, the final round against UT-Austin was cancelled and Tulane was declared co-champions.

Here are the full results for Tulane at the tournament:
Ren Allen & Jeremy Evans – Co-Champions
Claire Kueffner & Madison Sullivan – Semifinalists
Ren Allen – 2nd Speaker

Four Tulane teams in total competed at the Bayou City Swing. The team will next travel to Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tennessee in the effort to win their third straight NPDA (National Parliamentary Debate Association) tournament. Two years ago, Tulane placed two teams in semifinals at this competition.

If you would like to sign up for the tournament, the deadline to register is November 1st. If you would like to join the Debate Team, come to one of our three weekly practices or contact us!

The Tulane University Debate Team opened the 2017-18 season with a win at Morehouse College’s annual King Classic, the largest National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA) tournament yet hosted at Morehouse. Boasting 38 teams from 10 schools in two divisions (open and novice), the tournament’s competition was spirited and intense. After five preliminary rounds, one Tulane team “broke” to quarterfinals in the open division, while another one and a half teams broke in novice.

Uma Kumar-Montei and her partner from Morehouse, Jordan Davis, won their novice quarterfinal, while Claire Kueffner and Madison Sullivan prevailed in their open quarter. Kueffner and Sullivan went on to win the semifinal and carry a narrow 3-2 victory in the final round against Arkansas State.

Here are the full results for Tulane at the tournament:
Claire Kueffner & Madison Sullivan – Tournament Champions
Claire Kueffner – 2nd Speaker
Madison Sullivan – 7th Speaker*
Uma Kumar-Montei & Jordan Davis [Morehouse] – 4th Novice Team
Quinn Burke & Austin Yde – 8th Novice Team
Uma Kumar-Montei – 3rd Novice Speaker
Charlie Mendoza – 8th Novice Speaker
Claire Wynne – 10th Novice Speaker
Tulane University – 2nd Sweepstakes

*Sullivan, a novice, competed in the open division, and was not awarded a novice speaker award since she was in the top ten in open.

The win for Kueffner, a senior, was her second tournament victory at Morehouse, having won in 2015 with Tim DeCotis. Her partner this year, Sullivan, was competing in her first parliamentary debate tournament ever.

Tulane will look to build on this success at NPDA tournaments across the south in the coming months as the team continues to train one of the largest and most promising novice classes in the team’s history. TU will host its first in-house tournament of the year on Saturday, September 30th. If you’re interested in joining the team, please contact President Claire Kueffner at ckueffne@tulane.edu!

Tulane reached last year’s NPDA National Quarterfinals and also competes occasionally on the American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) circuit. Tulane finished last year ranked 47th overall in NPDA and 26th in APDA. Tulane finished 26th in the NPDA rankings in 2015-16, when they also broke to outrounds at NPDA Nationals.