Alliance's Jordan Schwartz wins national debate title
Never count Jordan Schwartz out.
The rising senior at Alliance High School is a hard worker. He’s a tough competitor, too, making the news several times over his career in Alliance City Schools.
In 2019, he won The Canton Repository’s Regional Final Spelling Bee and went on to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. In 2020, he scored a perfect 36 on the ACT college preparatory exam.
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Last month, he hit an even bigger jackpot. Schwartz was named a national champion in the National Speech & Debate Tournament in Louisville, Kentucky.
He won his title in the extemporaneous debate category of the event held June 12-17.
Schwartz has been competing in debate for two years, and is a member of Alliance High School’s Speech and Debate Team. While competing in Louisville, his team included his high school coach, Bob Duncan, and Duncan’s son, Robert, a veteran debate competitor.
The younger Duncan was a member of the team at Louisville High School in Stark County before he graduated in 2020. He’s now majoring in political science at Ohio State.
Bob Duncan, a teacher for 33 years, has been coaching the debate team for its two years of existence.
“This was my second year on the AHS Speech and Debate Team,” Schwartz said. “The team was started my sophomore year by (Duncan and Chris Kamp). I joined the first interest meeting in the summer of 2020 over Zoom and fell in love with the activity shortly thereafter.”
Pressure on during national debate event
“It has definitely gotten easier over the past two years,” he said. “For me personally, competing on stage has been something that I have enjoyed doing since middle school, with spelling and geography bees, so I'm used to the pressure.”
And it’s intense. At the start, 859 youngsters were competing. Schwartz said he just kept his focus on the job at hand.
“Each round, the numbers kept dropping, but I figured that it would have to end eventually,” he said. “Only once it was down to the top 11 did I think that I had any chance of winning, but even then, my goal was to make the podium of the top 6. Making the final was beyond my imagination. Winning it was something else entirely.”
His strategy was simple, given the size of the contest. “After I made elimination rounds, the goal was to treat every round like the last and see how far I could go,” he said.
Bob Duncan said his team prepares like they’re athletes.
“Debate is very much like many sports,” he said. “I believe the No. 1 mindset I hope I exemplify is confidence, because it may be the most important mindset I instill in our competitors.
“Just like a cross country runner who has conditioned well in the off-season and has built endurance during practices, when they arrive at the starting line and take off with the pack they can concentrate on their pace. Likewise, a debater who has prepared, researched, and practiced in advance is ready to support and defend their cases during a round. The best way to build confidence is to be well prepared.”
The team has practices like athletes, too.
“We have sparring debates, rebuttal drills, and cross-examination drills,” Bob Duncan said. “Sometimes sparring debates are fun and light-hearted with questions such as, ‘Is a hot dog a sandwich?’ or ‘Is a Pop-Tart a ravioli?’” A debate category such as extemporaneous debate, like its speech counterparts, United States extemporaneous speaking and international extemporaneous speaking, does require competitors to keep up with current events in politics and world affairs.”
In other types of debate, competitors receive topics ahead of time, which permits research and evidence collection. “During our Lincoln-Douglas debate practice, we also spend extensive time understanding logic and logical fallacies, as well as studying philosophy from philosophers throughout human history,” Bob Duncan said.
Schwartz gets much help from his friends
Schwartz said the two Duncans had specific roles during the national event.
“I'm quite proud of the setup we had going to prep for each round. Robert, who is Mr. Duncan's son and one of my coaches, placed highly in extemp debate at nationals in 2020. He brought his expertise to prep each topic in the best way possible,” Schwartz said. “Earlier in the tournament, we had a table full of debaters from Northeast Ohio working on each side of the resolution. Later, once I was the only competitor from our group remaining, I worked alone with my coaches.
“Typically, we would all collaborate to write the opening speech, then Mr. Duncan would start building a block file (debate jargon for a collection of responses to things the other side might say) while Robert and I worked on timing the speech and fine-tuning it. We usually ended up with a two-page speech and six extra pages of evidence to use in the round. Without a doubt, the process is frantic and somewhat crazy, but it worked every time.”
Robert Schwartz has been working with Schwartz since his first days in the activity.
“It did not take long for me to notice his potential in debate and how quickly his intelligence would transfer to an activity like this," Robert Schwartz said.
“From the start, Jordan has worked harder than anyone I know to improve his craft and skills which led him to qualify this year. He left his first season as a national tournament alternate and a third-place finisher at the state speech and debate tournament. Despite not having the same run at state this year, Jordan made it known that we would work even harder to prepare for the national tournament. It was less our coaching skills that got him to this point and clearly, his tenacity and dedication that led him to the final stage.”
Neither Schwartz nor Bob Duncan thought this level of success would come so quickly. Alliance’s team had a national qualifier its first year of competition in Matthew Eversdyke. Duncan said returning “in year two is truly beyond our wildest dreams.”
“We feel tremendous pride in Jordan’s accomplishment and this entire team,” Bob Duncan said. “One of the biggest challenges of starting a new team is simply spreading the awareness to other students that the team exists. This challenge is especially true of speech and debate because it is not a spectator activity. I am encouraged by the spotlight Jordan has brought on our team as other students, especially incoming freshmen, choose what extracurricular activities they would like to be a part of.”
Bob Duncan said Schwartz believes in debate and works to help his team find success.
“Far beyond his success on the awards stage is the pride we feel in the level of class that Jordan Schwartz conducts himself with,” Bob Duncan said. “As a result of his success, there is no ego that drives him but instead a desire to strengthen his team and debate as a whole. He is truly a team captain who is always willing to help everyone else on the team at practices or at a tournament before he helps himself.
“As I look back at every tournament awards ceremony when his name was announced as the winner, his first action was to shake his opponent's hand, not run off to collect a massive trophy. He accepts both victories and defeats with grace. He networks with other teams to grow the activity of debate, not his own personal success. He willingly shares his own personal extensive research and block files to strengthen the quality of debates with no fear of empowering the competition.”
The coach added that Schwartz worked with competitors from schools such as Hathaway Brown, Solon, University School and Kenston in areas outside Cleveland to bring about a free and equitable summer camp open to all novice debaters.
Schwartz also is spending time this summer preparing for his senior cross country season. Photos from various members of Alliance’s national debate preparation squad showed the teenager completing a run as a way to loosen up before his final day of competition.
He also is spending time with his father, Gary, and mother, Gwen, on college visits. He so far has visited Swarthmore, Columbia, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Harvard, Brown and Rice. He seems to have a different path to college than his sister, Julia, another Schwartz family scholar who aced the ACT. While Jordan has visited mostly schools in the eastern United States, Julia Schwartz attends Pomona College in California.
This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Alliance High's Jordan Schwartz wins national debate championship
