DEBATEPace’sDYNASTYThePaceAnationalleader,thedebateprogramcelebratesfourdecadesofexcellence
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O2012TheBeginningOnecouldarguethatthe1971-72schoolyearwasthemostformativeinPaceAcademy’shistory.Studentsarrivedonthefirstdaytoacampustransformedbyseveralconstructionprojects:additionalclassroomsandalibraryhadbeenaddedtoBridgesHall,anatatoriumwaserectedbehindBoydGymnasiumandnewtenniscourtssatattherearofthecampus.Thefledglingschoolhadreceivedarecord1,800applicationsforadmissionthepreviousspring,and100newstudentsjoinedthestudentbody,ahugenumberbyPacestandards.Toaccommodatetheinfluxofstudents,Headmaster
FRANK KALEY, entering what would be his final year at Pace, hired a number of new teachers. Among the group of first-year faculty was GEORGE MENGERT, now in his 40th year at the school. His charge was to teach English and direct the theatre program, but Kaley and Upper School Principal BOB CHAMBERS had additional plans for their new recruit. The school participated in the Georgia High School Literary Meet, a springtime competition that included events such oneact plays, essay writing, extemporaneous speaking, spelling—“everything you don’t play with a ball,” Mengert says. “Frank Kaley and Bob Chambers decided they wanted to start a debate team to accumulate more points toward the literary trophy,” he remembers. “The region debate tournament and the one-act play were the two main point getters.” The men told Mengert to field a debate team and bring home the region trophy.“While I could direct a play, I had no experience or knowledge of debate,” Mengert says. So he and fellow English teacher ANN BOUTWELL quickly recruited the most outstanding students from their classes, learned all they could about the sport, and gave it their best shot in the subregion competition.
“We really didn’t know what was going on,” Mengert says. “We just read the rules. But we had some very smart kids.” The team finished first at the sub-region level and second at regionals, but that wasn’t good enough for the notoriously competitive Mengert. “I decided, next year, we were going to win,” he says. So Mengert enlisted the help of one of the top debate coaches in the city, Ted Wolf. Wolf was a former Emory debater and the head coach at North Springs High School. He and his students worked with Pace’s new team and emphasized the importance of entering multiple tournaments throughout the year—not just the region and state competitions. They encouraged Pace debaters to enroll in summer workshops at universities like Emory, Georgetown and Harvard to develop their skills. The team took Wolf’s advice to heart, and DIANE BAKER ’73, JULIA DOWDA ’73, MARIE HUFFMASTER ’73 and MIKE PINKERTON ’75, competing as a four-man team, won the class A region and state competitions in 1973. “It was a wonderful experience, those very early stages of the debate program,” Baker remembers. Now an attorney at Baker Law Group in Roswell, Ga., she was Coach George Mengert
• Major national tournaments include the Tournament of Champions at the University of Kentucky and Emory University’s Barkley Forum. How Debate Works
“ " STAR Student in 1973 and named Mengert her STAR Teacher. “In those days, we had great road trips. All of us packed into the school station wagon and stayed four-to-aroom at the local Days Inn.” With three of his top debaters graduating in the spring of 1973, Mengert quickly came to understand the importance of building a sustainable team, as well as Pace’s advantage over many of its competitors: a junior high. “I could start recruiting and training kids in the seventh and eighth grades who would be way ahead of the pack by their freshmen years,” Mengert says. He went after a group of very bright, competitive young men: JAY POLSTEIN ’77, ROY SCHWARTZMAN ’78, MATT TOWERY ’78 and JIM WALSH ’77. The group, along with several others to follow, became known as “Mengert’s Munchkins.”
olstein, Schwartzman, Pinkerton and Walsh made up the varsity team during the 1974-75 year. They finished first at the region, state and all-class state tournaments, and their outstanding performance earned them an invitation to the United States Bicentennial Debate Tournament.
• Tournaments are held on the state and national levels, which often requires a good deal of travel.
• Each year, debaters from around the country debate a single resolution, covering a contested area of public policy.
• Beginning in the summer and extending through the year-long season, students research the topic extensively, preparing arguments for and against the resolution.
“Dr. Mengert seemed to recruit students who were small and not likely to go out for sports,” remembers DAVID MASLIA ’81, now assistant general counsel for CompuCredit. “The result was classes of short“Wedebaters.”mayhave averaged over five feet in height, but not by much,” says BRAD COOPER ’82, assistant general counsel with InComm in Atlanta.
P
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The tournament, held annually in Williamsburg from 1974 to 1981, celebrated the anniversary of the First Continental Congress and included two teams from each of the 13 original colonies. Pace and its mentor, North Springs High School, represented Georgia that first year. Although Pace didn’t win in 1974, Walsh and Polstein would return to the tournament as seniors in 1977 and advance to its final round, held by candlelight in the House of Burgesses with the governor of Virginia presiding.
• Students debate in teams of two with each debater delivering two speeches, one constructive and one rebuttal, per debate, generally at a rate of delivery incomprehensible to the untrained ear.
“[Debate] gave me confidence and taught me the analytic and communication skills I use today when I give speeches, do TV interviews and write articles. It also made me skeptical of the facile ways that people use ‘evidence’ and ‘facts.’ It did not make me humble, but it instilled a humility about what we can know—a useful lesson in an age where people are 100-percent confident that they are 100-percent right and thus feel free to impugn the intelligence and integrity of anyone who happens to disagree with them.”
• Debates are judged by debate coaches, college debaters and other debate experts.
– JIM WALSH ’77, PICTURED THIRD FROM LEFT IN 1974 WITH JAY POLSTEIN ’77, RHONDA ROSENBERG ’75 AND MIKE PINKERTON ’75 Pace's first debate team (1971-72) with assistant coach Ann Boutwell, front row left (not pictured: George Mengert)
Establishing a Winning Tradition
“While [Mengert] is known now for his excellence in drama and musicals, he truly was the first to build Pace into a national debate program,” says Towery, an attorney, syndicated weekly columnist and political analyst for WAGA-Fox5 Atlanta.
Schwartzmanremembers.andTowery won the tournament the following year, and in 1981, phase two of Mengert’s Munchkins, PAUL ATTAWAY ’81, Brad Cooper, GREG HECHT ’81 and David Maslia, took home the Bicentennial trophy in the tournament’s final year. “We ‘closed out’ the Williamsburg tournament, which means two Pace teams won in the semi-final round, so we would have to debate each other in the finals. I don’t think there was even a final round that year,” says Maslia. Pace was the only school to win three Bicentennial titles.
22 KnightTimes | Spring 2012
“Jim and I argued for the legalization of marijuana for medical reasons, a popular concept now, but not so popular back then,” says Polstein, who now practices family law with Wasser, Cooperman & Carter in Los Angeles. The team won, a huge accomplishment for the young program. “Afterwards, the governor came up to us and said, ‘You boys did a fine job, but I know you didn’t mean anything you said,’” Polstein
Pace Wins National Renown T he late 1970s and early 1980s saw Pace shoot to the forefront of the national debate scene. The school’s teams proved unbeatable at the highest levels of competition. In 1977, Walsh and Polstein won the Harvard Round Robin, a tournament that included the country’s top 13 teams. In 1978, Schwartzman and Towery took home the first-place prize at the Barkley Forum at Emory University, the country’s most prestigious debate. That same year, the two-man powerhouse won the all-class state debate tournament at West Georgia University, hopped in a car and drove to the University of Georgia where they performed in Pace’s one-act play, The Good Doctor, to claim the state one-act and debate titles—all in one day. “That will always be one of my fondest memories,” Mengert says. In 1979, Mengert was one of three coaches in the nation to win the Barkley Forum’s Gold Key Award, and was named Coach of the Year at the Minute-Man Conclave in Newark, N.J. Attaway also received a Gold Key Award, given to the most outstanding junior debater in the country, and Maslia won the top speakerAroundaward.that time, Savannah Country Day School had developed a strong program, giving the Pace teams a run for their money at the state level. Mengert admired the work of their coach, CHUCK SPURLOCK, and offered him a job as Pace’s assistant debate coach, with the understanding that he would take over as head coach within two years. Spurlock accepted. With Mengert and Spurlock at the helm, Pace qualified two teams, Hecht and Cooper, and Attaway and Maslia, for the national tournament 1982, the first school in the history of Georgia debate to do so. The team finished the year with 16 wins and seven closeouts, breaking all of its previous records. Pace would go on to win its tenth consecutive class A state title in 1983. The 1982-83 school year was Mengert’s last as debate coach. After a decade of unprecedented success, he handed over the reins of one of the country’s top high school debate programs to Spurlock.
Walsh, an internationally renowned expert on nuclear weapons, terrorism and international security at MIT, echoes Polstein’s sentiments: “[Mengert] has the coach’s gift for knowing when to push and when to step back. He is smart, completely committed as an educator and has a tremendous sense of humor. I love him, and I owe him a great debt for all that he did for me. I would not be where I am today were it not for Ahim.”New Era of Debate T he Pace debate program continued its success under Spurlock. The 1984-85 team of ASHLEY MATTISON
“I owe everything to [Mengert],” Polstein says. “He helped me develop the two sides of my personality that have guided me throughout my career—the creative side, mentored in the drama department, and the analytical side, mentored through debate.”
Top, the 1985-86 debate team included, left to right, David Hall �86, Bill Mabe �87, Dylan Pollard �89, Brian Biel �89, Jonathan Sacks �89, Chris Leavy �89 and Helene Mengert �86. Coach SpurlockChuck
“As a collection of curious, competitive and hardworking intellectuals, Pace debaters tried out new ideas, new arguments and new information in a safe, positive and rewarding environment. Pace represented the best because, to us, it really did matter. School trophy cases and home mantles reflected the successful results of such a commitment to excellence.
“I remember jumping up and down with [Wheatley and Wilson] every time we won
The Justin Grant Wilson Debates
– CHRIS WHEATLEY, HEAD COACH 1989-2005
A participant in Emory University’s debate camp, Ladha had watched the prestigious Barkley Forum as a seventh grader. “I declared then that I would one day be in the finals of the tournament, arguing in front of the 27-judge panel, the only one of its kind,” Ladha remembers. He got his chance his senior year when he and Wilson represented Pace in the tournament’s final round for the first time since the school took the title in 1978.
By his junior year, Wilson and fellow debaters SINAN ARAL ’92, BARRY EDWARDS ’91, Farouk Ladha, DEREK RICHARDSON ’91, Kevin Scharff and VICTORIA SELFRIDGE ’92 were jetting to tournaments across the “Wheatleycountry.sawpotential in me, and decided he’d travel me to Wake Forest, my first national tournament, at the beginning of my junior year,” Ladha recalls. Now a founder and managing partner of Four Rivers Group, an expansion-stage venture capital firm in San Francisco, Ladha and his partner, Richardson, made it to the semi-finals at Wake Forest and later won the Parkview Invitational. That same year, Wilson and Aral took home the first-place prize at the Southern Bell Forum, and the team claimed the state championship once again.
In 1992, Pace hosted the first annual Pace Round Robin. The debates are now known as the Justin Grant Wilson Debates in memory of former Pace debater
JUSTIN WILSON ’94, who was killed in a car accident while returning from a college debate tournament. The tournament invites seven of the nation’s top teams to a two-day event to celebrate the activity Wilson loved.
KnightTimes | Spring 2012 23 “ " ’85 and JOANN BROWN ’85 was the only female team to finish among the top 10 teams in the country, and Spurlock was named a Barkley Forum Gold Key Coach, one of its youngest recipients. HELENE MENGERT ’86 was one of the nation’s top debaters in 1986, and DAVID HALL ’86, BILL MABE ’87, JULIE SCHARFENBERG ’87, SAM ADLER ’89, CHRIS LEAVY ’89, DYLAN POLLARD ’89, JONATHAN SACKS ’89, BRIAN BIEL ’89, ALLY LADHA ’89, LESLIE KATZ LESTZ ’90 and KEVIN SCHARFF ’90 led Pace to additional state and national tournament titles throughout the late 1980s. In 1989, Spurlock was named Coach of the Year by the Parkview Forensics Society and the allstateAroundtournament.thattime, CHRIS WHEATLEY was coaching debate at Georgia State when he received a call from Pace. “Pollard and Saks were a very good team, consistently ranked in the top 20 nationally, and Pace wanted to hire a college coach to travel them around the country,” Wheatley says. He accepted the job and became head debate coach upon Spurlock’s departure in 1989. FAROUK LADHA ’92 remembered Spurlock fondly in a tribute in the 1990 Pacesetter: “[Spurlock was] one of Pace’s best history teachers and most successful debate coaches … impressing him was a common goal. Everyone desired to hear, ‘Good point, I’m impressed.’ Such a comment satisfied the individual for the rest of the day. His students respected him greatly.” “[Wheatley] took over my sophomore year and continued to develop the program,” says MARC WILSON ’92, cofounder of Virginia-based software company Appian. “My class grew up watching juniors and seniors like [Pollard and Sacks] do their thing at big tournaments. We looked up to them and worked hard in our debates around the state because we knew if we were good enough, we would get to travel.”
The 1990-91 varsity squad. Front, Sinan Aral �92 and Marc Wilson �92. Back, Chris Wheatley, Victoria Selfridge �92, Farouk Ladha �92 and Barry Edwards �91 Coach Chris Wheatley
Under Wheatley’s leadership, the debate program blossomed. “He was constantly supportive and the epitome of excitement for the academic,” Wilson recalls. That excitement was contagious. Wheatley’s teams continued to defend Pace’s region and state titles and, during the 1995-96 school year, Pace won its 20th Georgia class A state championship, setting the record for the most state titles in any single event by one “Surprisingly,school.Iam most proud of winning all of those state titles,” says KEVIN LINDER ’94, an attorney and business owner in Atlanta. “Even though we were widely acknowledged as the favorites every year, I loved winning because it made me part of a proud Pace debate tradition.”
The generous support of the J.B. Fuqua Foundation has enabled Pace to:
• Offer the Fuqua Summer Enrichment Scholarship for Middle School Debate. The scholarship allows one student from an urban setting, who is also part of the middle school league, to attend the Emory University’s summer camp.
• Offer four sections of public speaking and three levels of debate in the Upper
Joann Brown �85 and Ashley Mattison �85
Others felt the pressure of that winning tradition: “I vividly recall the region 7A tournament my junior year,” says EMILY BRAUNSTEIN POLLOCK ’97, a software engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass. “Our fourperson region team consisted of our most experienced debaters, and one of our final rounds was followed by a rather lengthy deliberation. I recall Wheatley nervously pacing the halls, as Pace had not lost the region tournament since some time in the 1970s. Fortunately, we won the round, and avoided the embarrassment of breaking a 25-year winning streak.” But for Pace’s competitors, the school’s decades-long debate domination was getting old, and Speaker of the House Tom Murphy decided to do something about it. In 2000, the Georgia High School Association was forced by Murphy and the state legislature to create a new competition classification for independent schools. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution ran a front-page photo of Pace seniors
• Partner with Emory University and the Glenn Pelham Foundation for Debate Education to host a benefit dinner for debate education every other year. The proceeds from the dinner support urban debate initiatives around Atlanta.
•School.Create, host and provide oversight to the J.B. Fuqua Middle School State Debate Tournament, a celebration of top Atlanta middle school debate teams. The first state tournament was held at Pace in 2000. Today, nearly 400 students compete in the Atlanta Middle School League State Tournament at Emory University.
Pace debaters and public speakers past, present and future extend their heartfelt thanks to the J.B. Fuqua Foundation!
Pace is excited to announce that the J.B. Fuqua Foundation recently gave an additional $250,000 to the endowment fund. The school will match this gift within the next five years through fundraising efforts—another $500,000 for the future of debate!
• Fund the J.B. Fuqua Chair of Public Speaking & Debate.
• Host Emory University’s summer camp for middle school debate. Established in 2002, the two-week camp helps students gain an understanding of the upcoming year’s policy debate topic.
J.B. Fuqua Foundation Renews Support of Pace Debate Wheatley (bottom left) and the 1998-99 team proudly display their trophies.
In 1999, Atlanta businessman J.B. Fuqua made a $1.2 million gift to Pace debate. The endowment funds the J.B Fuqua Chair of Public Speaking & Debate, enhances opportunities for Pace students in the areas of public speaking and debate, and benefits local and national debate programs through tournaments and programs offered by Pace.
24 KnightTimes | Spring 2012 an elimination round and advanced in the tournament, and every time we—after going through our various superstitious rituals— won a coin toss to pick our side,” Ladha says. “It was the fulfillment of my six-year dream and the culmination of my career as a top-ranking national debater.”
Thorpe, now a law student at the University of Georgia, left the tournament the nation’s top speaker.
Pace’s new classification, along with all other Georgia independent schools, counted each student as 1.5 students, and Pace entered the AA division. The seniors in that photo led one of the deepest and best debate teams in Pace history—and in the country. In 2000, Harbour and Thorpe won the Greenhill Round Robin and Debate Fall Classic, and placed second at the St. Mark’s School Tournament in Dallas and the Glenbrook Invitational in Chicago.
Allen and Smith would return to the National Tournament of Champions their senior year and win it all. “The highlight of high school for me was not in Atlanta, but in a dilapidated conference center in Lexington, Ky., where the most important high school debate tournament of the year was held,” says Allen, an associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., and former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. “[Smith] and I won unanimously on the argument that a small nuclear war wouldn’t be so bad because it would prevent a bigger, inevitable one. Hey, a win’s a win. Debate taught me that some arguments are better than others—but also that there’s a way to argue anything.”
ELIZABETH JABLONSKI-DIEHL NEWCAMP ’00 and BEN THORPE ’00 surrounded by debate trophies and reported that Murphy insisted on the reclassification because Pace kept the Bremen High School debate team, where his daughter-in-law coached, out of state competition by beating them each year.
JAMES THOMAS ’01 and HENRY HANCOCK ’01 won the Peach State Classic, and BOB ALLEN ’02 and BRIAN SMITH ’02 placed second at the University of Georgia Tournament. To finish off the year, three Pace teams were among the 68 to qualify for the National Tournament of Champions at the University of Kentucky.
MICHAEL HARBOUR ’00, LAUREN LINDER ’00,
KnightTimes | Spring 2012 25
The following year, Smith and Thorpe, both students at Dartmouth, stood together in the winners' circle when they finished second at the College National Debate Tournament. It is extremely rare for college debate partners to come from the same high school, and Smith was the first freshman finalist sinceDebate1969. in the MillenniumNew I n 2003, Wheatley, by then the Fuqua Chair of Speech and Debate thanks to a generous gift from Atlanta businessman J.B. Fuqua (see sidebar), hired SHUNTÁ JORDAN as his assistant coach. Wheatley would leave Pace in 2005 and move to Aspen, Co. to coach debate and teach social students. He left with fond memories of his Pace experience. “During my time at Pace, I had the pleasure of working with and getting to know the most amazing people imaginable,” Top, the 2003-04 debate team with coaches Chris Wheatley and Shuntá Jordan. Bottom, debaters in 2007.
“"“Debatesetthetrajectoryofmylife—itdeterminedwhereIwenttocollege;coachingdebatewasmyfirstjob;IpickedmygraduateschoolinpartbecauseIcouldbeinvolvedwiththeirdebateteam;andnow,asalawstudent,theheadstartdebatehasgivenmoreovermyfellowstudentsisenormous.”–JAMESTHOMAS’01
Wheatley says. “Pace debaters represent the kind of student a teacher wants in his classroom, and more importantly, they have always been the type of interesting and inspiring people you like and admire.
The best part of teaching is watching great students become thoughtful, articulate, concerned and involved adults.”
The 2011-12 debate team. From left, Jay Kumar, Jon Adelman, Michael Christianson, Jack Bowen, Katie Duval, Victor Skenderi, Brian Klarman, Jordan Epstein, Lauren Sukin, Paula Cheng, Clyde Shepherd, Tanner Lewis, Peter Hurley, Erik Howard, Anshuman Parikh, Jeri Brand, Erin Rawls, Larine Hamied
Wheatley’s students thought just as highly of their teacher and coach, and the senior class dedicated the 1997 Pacesetter to him. “This man can talk to anybody about almost anything,” the dedication reads. “With wit, humor, mental adroitness and insight, he moves around the school exuding what one of his colleagues has called ‘massive intelligence.’” But Wheatley was more than just smart. He had a knack for reading students and encouraging their strengths. “Coach Wheatley always brought out the best in every debater that he coached,” says Kevin Linder. “He recognized their individual talents. That’s difficult for any teacher or coach—he didn’t just focus on the star in the Walking through the Middle School this spring, you’re bound to see a Pace debate shirt or two. This year, more than 20 Pace Middle Schoolers have debated in at least one of the seven middle school tournaments in which Pace competed. Not all of those students will choose to continue debating in high school, but all of them will have improved their critical thinking and organizational skills, gained some public speaking experience, learned new facts about world events and had someThosefun.who do continue have the opportunity to hit the ground running, with many Pace ninth-grade debaters skipping the high school novice division and starting in junior varsity, often competing successfully against older students.
“From the very start in Middle School debate, I try to teach students from the perspective of how I’d want them to be thinking as a nationally competitive junior,” says JORDANA STERNBERG, Middle School debate teacher and a former high school and college debater, who is also assistant coach for Pace’s Upper School team. All students learn about debate in eighth grade during the quarter-long “Leadership and Debate” class, and Pace Middle Schoolers of every grade are invited to compete in middle school tournaments. But the Middle School’s yearlong debate elective allows interested students the option to focus on debate for the entire school year. In the elective, students learn the rules of the game, practice their skills and prepare for tournaments. But, rather than confining students to the relatively limited “packet” of research materials provided by the middle school league, the elective class provides time for students to explore, discuss and begin to understand the current events and domestic and international politics that form the basis for the debate topics on which they will compete in the future. They also learn concepts and tricks of argument that are staples of high school competition but not allowed in the middle school league. Perhaps most importantly, students are taught how to research and support their own arguments—a critical skill for high school debaters. A key tenet of Sternberg’s approach to Middle School debate is that it has to be fun. To that end, the elective class involves not just work, but also games, role-play, funny hats and sometimes even candy rewards. Students do Internet scavenger hunts on laptops to learn research skills. They watch film of top national debaters, and sometimes interact with Upper School debaters who come by to help or visit. They proudly announce their tournament victories at morningSternbergassembly.alsoencourages the Middle Schoolers to watch high school competitions and practices, and she sometimes has ambitious eighth graders help Upper School debaters with research. Her reasoning is simple: “Success in debate requires commitment and work— academic research and lots of practice. You just can’t force students to do that. They have to love the game.”
Debate in the Middle School
PAULA
Jordan also was nominated for the Georgia Forensic Coaches Association’s Coach of the YearTheAward.Future of Pace Debate
Debaters Past and Present: SAVE THE DATE
CLYDE SHEPHERD and TANNER LEWIS won the First Year National Championship debate tournament in late March and, as this article goes to press, senior LAUREN SUKIN and juniors JACK BOWEN, PAULA CHENG, JORDAN EPSTEIN, BRIAN KLARMAN and VICTOR SKENDERI are preparing for their shot at a national championship.Asinyearspast, a spirit of camaraderie pervades today’s Pace debate experience: “One of the great things about the team this year, beyond the success that we’ve had, is that we are kind of like a second family,” says Skenderi. “Each debater has his or her own role on the team, and we are with each other most weekends. We have a lot of fun and make a lot of jokes together. It’s awesome.”
Jordan has continued the level of excellence established by her predecessors.
Sukin feels similarly: “Pace debate has meant a lot to me in terms of my experience here,” she says. “Debate is an enriching experience that provides a supplement to Pace's academic program, and has certainly allowed me to become a more aware citizen. Aside from the activity itself, Pace's team and coaches are certainly wonderful and have made the activity an even better endeavor.”
Debate alumni often return to Pace to support current team members and visit with former coaches. Many have gone on to coach debate at the high school or college level, and all agree that the Pace debate experience shaped the individuals they are today.
“As we progress through the 21st century, the skills acquired through debate and public speaking will be necessary regardless of one’s chosen career path,” says Jordan. “Pace values these skills and believes that it’s important for others to be impacted through speaking, argumentation and critical thinking. I’m grateful for our history of success and look forward to the continued excellence of our program.”
“I have spent countless weekends at tournaments with members of the debate team, and seven weeks of my summer with debaters from across the country. This has allowed me to become really good friends with debaters both in and out of the Pace squad … I think the great atmosphere has contributed to the team’s successes this year.”
W hile the history of the Pace debate program is rich, Jordan prefers to focus on the future. “It’s great when freshmen join the team because I get the chance to help mold them and watch them grow—not only into great debaters, but into great students and people,” she says. “The best moments as a coach are the highs from winning and the lows from losing. Helping students accept and work through both ends of the competitive spectrum provides continued growth for the entire program.”
In 2009, she was named a Barkley Forum Gold Key Coach, and was a National Forensic League Diamond Coach last year.
Under Jordan’s tutelage, debaters like BRIAN ABRAMS ’07, MICHAEL FIELDS ’07, SIMRAN CHAUDHRY ’07, JENNIFER ARMSTRONG ’09, PEYTON LEE ’09, and ALEX ZHANG ’09 continued to win state titles, qualify for the National Tournament of Champions and excel in the classroom.
Please join debate alumni for a brunch celebrating 40 years of Pace debate. Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012 Pace Academy’s Knights Hall (Homecoming & Reunion Weekend) Stay tuned for additional details. Coach Shuntá Jordan
KnightTimes | Spring 2012 "27“ program, he found the star in every student.”
Chaudhry and Fields finished their high school careers ranked seventh in the nation; Armstrong and Lee graduated from Pace as the country’s number-five team; and Zhang became the first Lincoln Douglas debater from Pace to twice qualify for the national tournament.Freshmen
— with contributions from Chris Wheatley and Shuntá Jordan
’13
Jordan was named the Fuqua Chair of Speech & Debate in the fall of 2005 and continues to serve in that role today. Her love of debate and competitive nature have been necessary assets in her position, and during her tenure at Pace, Jordan has grown the team to one of the school’s largest.
– CHENG
