Chabot College Forensics team has been on a roll with a series of wins that will allow them to compete and work hard to prepare themselves for Regional state and the National State Championships.
It’s an exciting time for Chabot right now. Considering that most of the Forensics team is fairly new, half of whom just joined this spring, the team is experiencing early success in competitions. That’s a pretty big deal.
Chris Scott is one of the new competitors that had become the tournament champion in the novice Lincoln-Douglas debate division at Las Positas. Winning both his semifinal and final debate rounds. This is his first semester competing against individuals that have a year’s experience and winning, he shows a lot of promise. He’ll be a good addition to the team when they compete at the National Parliamentary Debate Association Championships that take place in Portland, Oregon.
At the end of February, the Forensics team competed at The Northern California Forensics Association Regional Championships. The team did not disappoint! First-year student Melaak Feleke took 4th in the varsity Lincoln-Douglas Debate. In the Individual Speech Event, we have Katie Cree who took 4th in novice persuasive speaking. In Lincoln-Douglas, Chris Scott finished as a semifinalist and was awarded the 2nd place speaker award. In parliamentary debate, Scott also finished as a quarterfinalist with his partner Matthew Abrahamson and was then awarded 4th place speaker. Nicol Taylor and Vishal Nadal, with a very strong finish, ended up as quarterfinalists in the competition for top novice debaters. The biggest win of that weekend was due to the second-semester competitor, Matthew Abrahamson who finished the tournament as the top novice speaker in the parliamentary debate.
On March 7-11, DaCobi Anderson competed at the California Community College Forensics Association State Championship Tournament and managed to beat out most of the best debaters in the state! This allowed him to progress to the prelims in Lincoln-Douglas debate. He managed to make it all the way to the final round where he finished as a State Silver Medalist in NFA-LD debate.
Team Captain Joel Brown and his partner, Matthew Abrahamson will be competing at the Phi Rho Pi National College Championships that takes place in April at Daytona Beach, Florida. They will be faced with a majority of individuals that are not from the region so it’ll be a new challenge for these two veterans to learn how they judge and adapt to that environment. Brown states, “The competitive side of me full on embraces that challenge, I’m looking forward to it”. These two gentlemen have complete faith in each others ability and they also have amazing coaches to help them prepare and succeed. Be on the lookout for these two.
Stephanie Eisenberg Todd, the Director of Forensics, has done a fantastic job leading this new team to success. The Forensics team doesn’t treat this course like a class. They are more family if anything. DaCobi Anderson describes his team quite beautifully by stating, ”They have a lot of different flavors. I’m from Louisiana and we cook gumbo and all of these types of spices it makes for one hell of a gumbo. Everybody loves the gumbo because they keep coming back”.