Seawolf Debate

This week, I had the privilege of accompanying 25 high school students from Alaska (12 from Anchorage) to the NSDA national championship. Qualifying to nationals already means the students are in roughly the top 3-4% of speech & debate competitors in the nation. Advancing to elimination rounds puts them in the top 1%.

Alaska, arguably, had one of its best showings ever. Although no one “walked” the stage this year, the breadth of success rivaled any year in decades.

Prose: Swiss Berestoff (Kodiak) advanced to the third elimination round, placing in the top 29 out of 420 students.

Extemporaneous Debate: Jasper Davis (West) advanced to the third elimination round, placing in the top 127 out of 1,071.

Extemporaneous Debate: Ken Fine (Soldotna) advanced to the second elimination round, placing in the top 214 out of 1,071.

Alaskans also had 4 near misses:

Policy Debate: Zach Day & Katrina Nelson (West) went 7-5 and missed advancing to elimination rounds by a single ballot.

Public Forum: Madeleine Bass & Samuel Lagerquist (Juneau Douglas) went 7-5 and missed advancing to elimination rounds by a single ballot.

World Schools Debate: Jaxson Cook (Chugiak), Adelina Elliot (West), Grace Yang (West), & Sam Fineman (West) went 3-3 and missed advancing to elimination rounds by a single ballot.

Congressional Debate - Senate: Wayne Barnum (AMCS) was the highest placing senator not to advance to semifinals, meaning he was the “next student up.”

We have video for the UAA - Air Force exhibition debate on May 4th. The program starts at 20 minutes into the video. Part 2 is posted in the comments.

2026 05 04 UAA vs USAFA Pt 1 Exhibition Debate between UAA and Air Force on May 4th, 2026. Topic...

Exciting news! Former Seawolf Debater Zac Johnson is running for Lt Governor! Good luck Zac!

Last night we hosted an exhibition debate against the #1 ranked debate team in the nation (Fallon Eggett & Audrey Neukomm) from the US Air Force Academy. We had a fantastic evening in which the Seawolves beat my own undergraduate institution on a 2-1 decision (although Air Force won the audience poll).

Casi LeBlanc did an excellent job representing UAA in her final appearance as a Seawolf Debater. Ashton Bednar also did an excellent job, but returns for a couple more years of debating.

On the judging panel, we were fortunate to have Jon Bittner, Joelle Hall, and Seawolf Debate alumnus Zac Johnson.

Several Seawolf Debaters worked backstage reviewing audience-submitted questions, which were then presented by Jay Badalich, Wayne Barnum, & Colton Henry.

Shout out to Forty Ninth State Brewing & Frontier Soda for feeding the UAA & USAFA students and the stage crew before the event.

A special thanks to the Atwood Foundation for supporting events like this throughout the year. Without their support, we wouldn't be able to support the community the way we do. Thanks to them, our program was able to spend nearly 2,700 hours of time in service of the community, when we weren't representing the UAA: University of Alaska Anchorage and the state of Alaska in intercollegiate debate competitions.

We are excited to announce our three guest judges for the UAA vs Air Force exhibition debate on May 4th.

Jonathan Bittner - President & CEO of the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation
Joelle Hall - President of the Alaska AFL-CIO
Zac Johnson - Anchorage Assembly

Buy your tickets now!
https://aac-uaa.evenue.net/events/SB050426

This past weekend, we hosted the Alaska 529 Middle School State Debate Championship on the UAA campus. In total, there were 128 middle school students engaging in civil public discourse, with an additional 17 high school students working alongside our debaters as judges.

We spent more than 175 hours in service of these exceptional students take part in one of the largest middle school state championships. By all accounts from the judges, the quality of debate was the highest they had seen in recent years.

Many thanks to Alaska 529 and the UAA: University of Alaska Anchorage for making this event possible.

We are excited to host the upcoming public debate against the #1 ranked US Air Force Academy. Audience members are encouraged to submit questions to the debaters & judges using this link. At the end of the evening, we will select a handful of questions from those submitted before & during the event. (If you haven't purchased tickets yet, the link is in the comments.)

Q&A for UAA vs USAFA Debate Submit questions for the debaters & panelists in this year's exhibition debate. We will only have time for a few questions. We will attempt to find recurring themes in audience submissions.

Get tickets now to the UAA vs Air Force Exhibition Debate!

On Monday, May 4th at 7:00 pm, the Seawolves and the Falcons will hold an exhibition debate in ARTS 150.

We look forward to hosting you as we scrimmage against the #1 team in the nation.

Many thanks to the Atwood Foundation for making this event possible.

UAA vs USAFA Public Debate - 5/4 @ 7pm | University of Alaska-Anchorage

This weekend, the Seawolves competed at the national championship hosted by Clemson University.

After six grueling rounds of preliminary debates, two UAA teams finished among the top 32 teams in the nation, earning spots in elimination rounds (Ashton Bednar & Fredric Lacsina and Wayne Barnum & Colton Henry).

Wayne & Colton won their first elimination round, but were then knocked out by tough teams from Ball State University and the US Air Force Academy.

This is the second straight year that Wayne and Fredric advanced to elimination rounds at the national championship. Both students return to Seawolf Debate next season.

Earning individual honors:
4th place novice speaker - Evan Leaf
16th speaker - Wayne Barnum

Also of note, the Seawolves advanced teams to elimination rounds at every US tournament we attended this year. This consistency demonstrates significant depth and talent across the entire program.

We would also like to offer shoutouts to two Seawolf Debate alumni:
- Geneva Luteria (2024 graduate) is completing her master’s degree at Clemson this year and served as co-chief adjudicator and assistant tournament director for this year’s national championship.
- Izzy Moore (2023 Alaska Middle College graduate who is completing her undergraduate degree this year at Lewis & Clark College) took 2nd place at this year’s national championship and earned 5th place speaker recognition