Speech and debate team wins PKD Division I national championship

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
Office of Media Relations
March 21, 2018

SAN MARCOS – The Texas State University speech and debate team has won the Pi Kappa Delta (PKD) Division I National Championship during the PKD national tournament March 14-17 in Nashville, Tennessee.

This is the Texas State team’s first PKD national team title and its second national championship. The team won the National Forensics Association national title in 2011.

The tournament, hosted by Tennessee State University, featured 626 students representing 82 colleges and universities from 25 states. Students competed for national titles in individual speaking events, team debate events and overall team titles.

Matthew Anderson, a senior communication studies major from Austin, placed 5th in the nation in extemporaneous speaking. Anderson, along with his partner, Jordan Drake, a junior from Cibolo, reached the octo-finals in parliamentary debate.

National semi-finalists for Texas State included Dillon McCoy, a junior from Bandera, in prose interpretation, and Jaelyn Ashford, a sophomore from Nolanville, in program oral interpretation. Lily Montemayor, a freshman from Hebbronville, reached the national quarterfinals in extemporaneous speaking.

Several members of the team also received excellence awards at the tournament. These included Ashford for poetry interpretation; Tyshee Sonnier, a junior from San Antonio for impromptu speaking; and Preston Nieves, a sophomore from Pflugerville, for extemporaneous speaking.

Pi Kappa Delta, founded in 1911, is the oldest national collegiate forensic (speech and debate) organization in the United States. The honor society consists of speech and debate educators, students and alumni from across the country. Texas State received its charter in 1934 with university distinguished alumni R.H. Bing, J. Edwin Smith and York Wilbern, as well as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s debate coach, H.M. Greene, among the charter members.

Texas State’s team consists of the LBJ Debate Society, named for President Johnson, who debated as an undergraduate; and the Elton Abernathy Forensics Society, named for the long-time communication studies chair.

For more information, contact Wayne Kraemer in the Department of Communication Studies at wk02@txstate.edu.

About Texas State University

Founded in 1899, Texas State University is among the largest universities in Texas with an enrollment of 38,694 students on campuses in San Marcos and Round Rock. Texas State’s 184,000-plus alumni are a powerful force in serving the economic workforce needs of Texas and throughout the world. Designated an Emerging Research University by the State of Texas, Texas State is classified under “Doctoral Universities: Higher Research Activity,” the second-highest designation for research institutions under the Carnegie classification system.