El Camino College Speech and Debate Team Wins 2025 National Championship
The El Camino College Forensics Team continued its national dominance by recently winning at the Community College National Debate Championships in two prestigious competitions.
El Camino College was the top debate school at Phi Rho Pi, the annual Community College national tournament, held this year in Norfolk, Virginia, running away with the national title and leaving their closest competitor in the dust.
“We earned 119.5 points, with the second-place school more than 40 points behind,” explained Francesca Bishop, one of the team’s faculty advisors and coach. “We were also awarded the prestigious Silvia Mariner Perpetual Sweepstakes trophy for the college with the greatest number of points over time.”
The ECC team is the top community college in the National Parliamentary Debate Association national standings, bested only by 4-year universities Rice University, UCSD, Parli Debate at Berkely, and Point Loma Nazarene University.
ECC students Juliette Celis, Julissa Celis, Sophia Cruz, Nia Gordon, Danielle Kabboul, Salma Kidwai, Alec Lyons, Abigail Morey, Andres Osorio, Zaynah Robb, Ashley Singh, Abigail Sucup, and Ethan Syring proudly and decisively competed in this year’s debate championship competitions. While almost everyone on the team won medals in their respective categories, the top honors went to Danielle Kabboul, as this year’s national champion in the International Public Debate, Andres Osorio as the national champion in the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and Abigail Morey (a first-year competitor) was named the top Impromptu Speaker in the nation.
The El Camino College Forensics team is a perennial powerhouse in the speech and debate community, regularly competing on both the community college and four-year college/university level. This 45-second video, made by one of the team’s students, captures these great debaters’ experiences along this year’s journey to victory.
In addition to Professor Bishop, herself an El Camino graduate and former team member, the forensics team is coached by two program/college alumni: Joseph Evans, communication studies professor and Brittany Hubble, communication studies assistant professor.