Gonzaga Debate Team Tournament Champion
The Gonzaga University debate team won the Northwest Cross- Examination Debate Association Championship Tournament held March 3-5 in Eugene, Ore. Senior Blake Dias and sophomore Ian McLoughlin beat 58 other teams from 20 schools throughout the West to win Gonzaga’s third title in four years. Also, Dias was named the best individual speaker of the 118 contestants. This marks the fifth time in the 10-year history of the tournament that a Gonzaga debater has been named top speaker. McLoughlin finished 16th.
The open invitational tournament, the largest in regional championship history, consisted of six preliminary debates, followed by five rounds of a single-elimination bracket of the top 32 surviving teams. The team of Dias and McLoughlin was seeded into elimination rounds and powered to wins over Oregon, Northern Illinois and Western Washington. In the semifinals, they beat a team from California State University-Chico. In the final, they beat Weber State University.
Gonzaga’s entire squad had a successful tournament. Senior Ben Stuckart and junior Fred Petersen were seeded sixth into the elimination rounds, and helped GU’s cause by eliminating USC’s top team in the round of 16. They eventually fell in the quarterfinals, but made GU the only school to advance two teams into the final eight. Petersen was named the 13th speaker overall.
Senior Chad Rigsby and sophomore Will Brewer defeated the Air Force Academy in the round of 32 before suffering an upset loss. Freshmen Katie Bauer and Tara Foote reached the round of 32, as did freshman Sean Purdy and sophomore transfer Jeff Browder. Gonzaga thus broke its own record of four teams advancing into elimination rounds, a standard it had set each of the past two years.
The Wishing Star board of trustees has elected John Goedde of Panhandle Insurance in Coeur d’Alene to the board. He is a former chairman of the board of the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce and is president of Panhandle Insurance.
Susan King, Spokane, has had original poetry published by The National Library of Poetry in the books “Seasons to Come” and “Edge of Twilight.” The poems are entitled “Rest in Peace” and “Dolphins in a Dream,” respectively.
O’Neil Vinson, retired equal opportunity officer for School District 81, recently joined Youth Help Association’s board of directors. Youth Help is a nonprofit agency whose mission is to provide education, prevention, intervention and treatment services to youth and families in crisis.
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