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About the NCFL Grands
Each year, the National Catholic Forensic League sponsors its “Grand National Tournament” on Memorial Day Weekend. Over one thousand students from across the country converge upon the host city for a competitive weekend of forensics.
“The National Catholic Forensic League is an organization originating from the Catholic secondary school community in the United States for the purpose of providing a service to all secondary school students. In imitation of the example of Jesus Christ, who gave both humble service and articulate leadership, we seek the truth spoken in charity. All of the following regulations are inspired by and seek to further these fundamental human values.
“The purposes of the LEAGUE shall be: to encourage and to assist in the development of articulate leaders through whose skills truth may be widely spread and become an influence in the life of the nation, to promote curricular and co-curricular speech and debate activities in Catholic, private, and public secondary schools throughout the nation, to establish, to maintain, and to coordinate a system of Diocesan Leagues with the purpose of administering schedules of interscholastic speech and debate activities, to assist individual schools in speech and debate activities where no Diocesan League has been established, to sponsor and to administer the annual Grand National Tournament of the League.”
True to its word, a diverse group of students have advanced to the NCFL: Interestingly, since 1997, only three finalists have attended Catholic high schools. The tournament is shorter than the other competitions billing themselves as national championships: TOC is three days, while Nationals lasts a week.
No complete list of past National Catholic Forensic League Lincoln-Douglas winners has been made publicly available, but we have been able to assemble a partial list of champions. If you can help us reconstruct its history, please contact Jon Cruz.
1983 | Emily Howden (Twin Lakes High School, FL)
1984 | Carl Waldspurger (Lasalle College High School, PA)
1994 | Liz Rogers (Shendehowa High School, NY)
1996 | Jessica Rosenberg (Benilde-St. Margaret’s High School, MN)
1997 | Mac Hawkins (LaGrange High School, LA)
1998 | Chetan Hertzig (Lexington High School, MA)
1999 | Beth O’Connor (Hunter College High School, NY)
2000 | Kevin Farrell (Elk Grove High School, IL)
2001 | Ben Rothstein (Milton Academy, MA)
2002 | Duncan Cooper (St. John’s Prep School, MA)
2003 | Nina Thanawala (Ridge High School, NJ)
2004 | Tara Tedrow (Celebration High School, FL)
2005 | Tara Tedrow (Celebration High School, FL)