For the first time since 2003, the UGA debate Team has qualified three teams for the National Debate Tournament, which will be held at the University of Texas at Austin March 26-29.
The NDT is a qualifying event for the 78 best two-person debate teams in the country. As part of the selection process, only six schools are allowed to bring three teams to the event, based on an evaluation of competitive records over the course of the season.
This year the schools that have qualified three teams are the University of California-Berkeley, Emory, Harvard, Northwestern, Wake Forest and UGA. The three UGA teams are comprised of debaters Brittany Cambre and Adam Schmidt, Karen Harrison and Maggy Warden, and Mike Lacy and Tommy Beyer.
The team’s coach, Casey Harrigan, is in his first year at UGA preparing the teams for both regional and national competitions. This also marks the 20th consecutive year that UGA has qualified at least one team for the NDT. Harrigan is a faculty member in the department of speech communication in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
The trip to Austin will be funded through the support of the President’s Venture Fund.