Winston Salem, NC — MSU Debate won the junior varsity division at the American Debate Association (ADA) Fall Championship tournament hosted at Wake Forest University last weekend.
Eleazar Asase, a mechanical engineering junior in the Honors College, and Will Sterbenc, a James Madison College freshman, won the division after winning ten straight debates. 
Asase and Sterbenc defeated teams from the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Missouri State University, Southwestern College, the United States Military Academy, and Southern Nazarene University in their preliminary debates.
“Winning every single preliminary debate is tough to do,” said Will Repko, MSU Debate Head coach. “These are the best junior varsity teams from all over the country, so you have to really be on your game to win them all.”
After six preliminary debates, the tournament was seeded into a single-elimination bracket where Asase and Sterbenc were the second seed.
The bracket is determined by teams’ win-loss records in preliminary debates and individual speaker points. Sterbenc was the tournament’s sixth overall speaker and Asase was eighteenth out of eighty debaters.
In elimination debates, Asase and Sterbenc bested a team from the United States Military Academy, a hybrid team from the University of Iowa and Johnson County Community College, a team from Liberty University, and a team from the University of North Texas to win the tournament.
This is the first time in program history that MSU Debate has won the ADA Fall Championship tournament.
“Will and Eleazar have had a tremendous first semester. They’ve competed at many of largest junior varsity tournaments and have proven how competitive they are,” said Repko.
Earlier this season, Asase and Sterbenc reached the quarterfinals in the wildcat division of the JW Patterson Debates and won the junior varsity division of the Jesuit Debates.
The MSU Debate team is part of the Honors College.