Students Win National Awards in Speech and Debate

Team members posed with their trophies, from left to right: Sebastian Perez-Navarro (Communication Studies), Felix Castañón (Mechanical Engineering), and Kenneth Ochoa (Psychology). Not pictured: Arely Avitia.  

Each year, Pi Kappa Delta hosts a comprehensive national speech and debate tournament that is often among the largest tournaments in the country. The University of Texas at El Paso was well represented and successfully came back with a few awards. 

This year, UTEP’s team competed in the 2025 Pi Kappa Delta National Comprehensive Tournament at the Ohio University campus in Athens, Ohio against 56 schools from around the country including institutions like Cornell University, The University of Alabama, Arizona State University, and many more.  
 
Individually, Sebastian Perez-Navarro (freshman, Communication) won the national championship in Spanish Language Impromptu Speaking, 2nd Place in Impromptu Speaking, and 3rd Place in Extemporaneous Speaking.   

Felix Castañón (freshman, Mechanical Engineering) was awarded Excellent (Top 30%) in Interviewing. Arely Avitia (junior, Graphic Design) and Sebastian Perez-Navarro also won an asynchronous Excellent award (Top 30%) in Podcasting.  Based on our entry size, the team was placed in the Tier 3 sweepstakes category (small teams/limited entries) where we won 2nd Place Individual Events Team Sweepstakes and 4th Place Combined Speech/Debate Sweepstakes.  

With over 100 years of history and more than 80,000 members, Pi Kappa Delta is the oldest forensics honor society, and its national tournament is the largest intercollegiate speech and debate competition in the United States. 

They are currently recruiting members for next year, so any students interested in joining can reach out to Dr. Carlos Tarin at catarin@utep.edu.