El Camino’s forensics and debate team won their second ever community college national championship in the National Parliamentary Debate Association tournament at Cal State Long Beach from March 19-21.

Mason Jones and Isaac Curtiss, EC’s current top forensics team, placed 7th in the tournament out of 164 teams participating.

Debate coach Joseph Evans spoke about the significance of the team’s achievement.

“This is the best El Camino has ever done at this particular event,” Evans said. “El Camino has won this award only one other time in its history.”

In first elimination rounds at the NPTE tournament the week before, El Camino lost once but still qualified for the next elimination round.

However, at the NPDA El Camino had to win round after round in order to advance through the tournament.

“It’s great that EC won this award because this year we were the youngest debate team at the tournament,” Curtiss said. “Mason and I kept winning during elimination rounds until the quarterfinals.”

Curtiss also spoke about his old teammate, former EC student Arielle Stephenson, who placed 2nd in the competition.

“It was really good to see her go this far. She didn’t win but she is a person who helped Mason and I get to the quarterfinals,” Curtiss said.

EC had additional teams participate in the tournament and they did fairly well.

Jamilah Bazille and Kelsea Posantes finished with an even record and were the 4th best first-year team of the tournament, according to the press release.

A third pair from EC, Zara Andrabi and Curtis Wang, also advanced to the elimination rounds and finished in the top 64 teams, according to the press release.

“We don’t know how we ranked overall in the competition, but it was really fun,” Wang said. “We talked about a lot of current event issues meaning that we really have to prepare beforehand and do research on various topics.”

Andrabi and Wang both competed with the EC forensics team for the first time at this tournament.

“As partners we work pretty well,” said Andrabi. “As a whole team there’s a lot of love, we’re like a family.”

In both the NPTE and NPDA tournaments, EC’s forensics team was able to break community college records and Evans compared it to something you’d see in March Madness.

“It’s like if a community college qualified for the basketball March Madness tournament and did really well,” Evans said.