WKU News

WKU Forensics won national championships at the 2025 College LD Grand Prix. Debate team members include: (back row, from left) Chad Meadows (Director of Debate), Sage Carter, Evan Grisham (Graduate Assistant), Rae Fournier, Tanya Prabhakar (Graduate Assistant); (middle row, from left) Chase Shockley, Kole Ingram, Antonina Clementi, Ameya Puranik; (front row from left) Joshua St. Peter, Nik Schintgen, JaKayla Brown.

WKU Forensics took first in Open and Combined sweepstakes at the 2025 College LD Grand Prix, hosted by Kansas City Kansas Community College on March 15-16.

At the Grand Prix, WKU advanced 90 percent of its entry to elimination rounds. WKU students finished in the Top 4 of all three divisions (Novice, Junior-Varsity and Open) and paved the way for a combined sweepstakes championship, which is scored based on a university’s top four entries across all divisions. 

Director of Debate Chad Meadows said: “LD is a great event for younger and inexperienced debaters to grow from a novice to a seasoned varsity competitor. We are proud to have students at all levels working side by side toward the same goal: a combined sweepstakes championship.”

In the Open division, WKU advanced six students to the elimination rounds of the Top 16. Ultimately, those students advanced deep in the Open division constituting 4 of the Top 8 and finishing as the Top 3 competitors at the tournament. As a team, WKU finished ahead of Washburn University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Oxford College of Emory University, and Florida State University.

Junior Rae Fournier of Woodbridge, Virginia, junior Sage Carter of Salina, Kansas, senior Antonina Clementi of Lafayette, Louisiana, and sophomore Chase Shockley of Carthage, Missouri, were named to the 2025 LD All-American team. This award is voted on by the LD Coaches Association and recognizes the top 10 competitors in the country on the basis of their success at invitational tournaments during the season.

Fournier, Carter and sophomore Nik Schintgen of Lansing, Kansas, “closed out” the Open division of the tournament, sharing a national championship in a three-way tie. Fournier was also named the Top Speaker of the tournament. Junior Kole Ingram of Hindman, Kentucky, was the Co-Champion in the Junior Varsity division.

Meadows said this tournament, the first in a series of national competitions WKU Forensics will attend before the National Forensics Association National Championship in April, was “the culmination of many late nights and early mornings by all our students and coaches spent preparing to not just be in big debates, but to win big debates. I couldn’t be more proud of our program’s efforts at this year’s Grand Prix, my favorite tournament of the year.”

WKU Forensics will next compete at the Asynchronous Speech Championship.

Results from the Grand Prix are as follows:

• Open Speakers: Rae Fournier, Top Speaker; Sage Carter, 6th; Antonina Clementi; 7th; Nik Schintgen, 8th; Joshua St-Peter of Canton, Georgia, 12th; JaKayla Brown of Kansas City, Kansas, 15th.
• Open: Rae Fournier; Champion; Nik Schintgen, Champion; Sage Carter; Champion; Joshua St-Peter, Top 8; Antonina Clementi, Top 16; JaKayla Brown, Top 16.
• Junior Varsity Speakers: Ameya Puanik of Mountain House, California, 2nd; Kole Ingram, 3rd.
• Junior Varsity: Kole Ingram, Co-Champion; Ameya Puranik, Top 3.
• Novice Speakers: Oli Wood-Morris of Chatham, Illinois, 6th.
• Novice: Oli Wood-Morris, Top 4.

More: Check out the WKU Forensics Facebook page or follow @wkuforensics  and @DebateWku on X/Twitter.

Contact: Ganer Newman, (270) 745-6340

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Western Kentucky University prides itself on positioning its students, faculty and staff for long term success. As a student-centered, applied research university, WKU helps students expand on classroom learning by integrating education with real-world applications in the communities we serve. Our hilltop campus is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which was recently named by Reader’s Digest as one of the nicest towns in America, just an hour’s drive from Nashville, Tennessee.