By Dr. Douglas Fraleigh, Director of Forensics
The Fresno State Barking Bulldogs Debate team continued their highly successful season at the USC (Jan 3-5) and CSU Fullerton (Jan 7-9) tournaments.
At Fullerton, Jose Carlos Aceves and Kyle Zoldoske won first place in novice debate, defeating UNLV in the final round and Long Beach State in the semifinals. This marks the Barking Bulldogs fourth first-place finish at a tournament this season. Also, Primavera Leal Martinez and Aran Litt won two rounds in open debate, including a win over one of the top UNLV teams in our region. Nick Mirza and Aaron Lowe won two-rounds in junior varsity debate.
At USC, Aceves and Zoldoske continued their record of success with a 3rd place finish in novice debate. Kyle Zoldoske also received the third speaker award. Martinez and Litt won three rounds in open debate, and Mirza and Lowe won two-rounds in JV debate.
The USC and Fullerton tournaments continued the Barking Bulldogs strong run of tournament success in 2018-19. The Bulldogs have won sixteen team awards and eight individual speaker awards to date. Three teams have won first place awards (Martinez and Litt, open division, SDSU; Aceves and Zoldoske, novice division, UNLV, and CSU Fullerton; and Mirza and Lowe, novice division, SFSU). Two teams have placed second (Mirza and Lowe, novice division, Arizona State; Chapman and Ervin, novice division, Northridge). Finally, three teams have won third place awards (Martinez and Litt, open division, Northridge; Mirza and Lowe, open division, SDSU; Aceves and Zoldoske, novice division, USC).
A big thank you goes out to Alumni Coach Julio Lopez, who judged at USC and Fullerton, and Director of Debate, Tom Boroujeni, who worked hard to help get the team ready for these key tournaments in Southern California.
The College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State 