Welcome
Damien participates in policy debate, competing across the state and regularly travels nationally for invitational tournaments. Damien has one of the most successful programs in California for over 60 years. Take a closer look at these pages to learn about the history of Damien Debate, team tournament schedule, and this year's national debate topic!
THE NATIONAL DEBATE TOPIC
Every year, the National Speech and Debate Association in conjunction with the National Federation of High Schools issues a nation-wide vote of its membership to choose a specific resolution that our students will debate for a full year.
2023-2024 POLICY RESOLUTION
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.
| History |
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Debate has existed at Damien since the early 1960's. The program was granted a charter by the National Forensic League in 1964. In 1968, Damien won its first state debate championship. Since that time, Damien has maintained a level of competitive excellence virtually unmatched in the state of California.
Dozens of Damien debaters have gone on to have successful college debate careers: The most successful of these was undoubtedly Mark Fabiani, who won Top Speaker at the 1975 National Debate Tournament. More recently, there have been several Damien alums who have been noteworthy names in college debate: Paul Derby, Kevin Tessier, Bryan Yeazel, Shuman Sohrn, John Miller, Omri Ceren, Andres Gannon, David Munoz, Christian Rodriguez, Christian Bato, Alex Velto, Omar Darwish, and Stephen Lewis among others.
The program was blessed in the early years with talented coaching. The program was begun by Mr. Charles Stamps, who coached the team through the late 60's. The program was successful throughout the 60's and into the 70's, with strong administrative support, and leadership from coaches Robert Schwartzberg ('70-'73), Jim Caforio ('73-'74), Barbara Busse ('74-'79), Paul Hudson ('79-'80), and Bob Mocharnuk ('80-'82). Chuck Ballingall came to Damien in the Fall of 1982. In 1998, Mr. Ballingall became the youngest coach ever inducted into the California High School Speech Association's Hall of Fame. In 2008, he became the 14th Californian to be inducted into the National Forensic League's Hall of Fame.
Chuck unfortunately passed away in 2017 and Assistant Director Donny Peters was promoted to Director. Donny would lead the team through the next five seasons, until stepping away in 2021.