Wiley College director of forensics passionate about debate
Rodrick Jeremy Haynes working with Medina during debate camp.Special to the News-Messenger
Posted: Monday, September 5, 2011 4:00 am
BY Hannah DeClerk hdeclerk@news-journal.com |0 comments
MARSHALL — Growing up in a rough part of Los Angeles, Christopher Medina said he is indebted to a certain skill he claims saved his life— the act of debate.
As the new director of forensics at Wiley College, he plans to use this passion to influence his students.
“In my students, I am looking for not so much skill but desire, because I know what it did for me, because I had the desire,” Medina said. “Because I know when I started to embrace the act of debate, my whole world changed.”
With a degrees from California State University at Long Beach and Minnesota State University in Mankato, Medina has spent more than 25 years as a forensics competitor, judge and coach.
He has been a high school teacher for more than a decade and director of forensics at the University of La Verne in California for several years.
“I coached the entire time I was in college. It took me nine years to get my bachelor’s degree because I was so dedicated to coaching,” he said. “And I believe I am still the youngest coach with a national champion.”
His students have won two American Forensics Association National Championships and one World Universities Debating Championship.
However, he said his journey leading up to his accomplishments was anything but easy. He said growing up in East Los Angeles, he had two choices — join a gang or go to college. “And in high school, I did not think I was smart enough to go to college,” Medina said.
His mother, who was Mexican American, worked two to three jobs to support him and his brother.
“Basically, we come from a single mother, and she worked hard for us,” he said.
During high school, he said, he was getting into trouble and hanging out with the wrong crowd until he was introduced to debate. It turned his life around.
“At first, I didn’t like debate, because it was very competitive,” Medina said. “But the more I got into it, the more passionate I felt about it.”
He said by the time he graduated from high school, he had qualified for many national and state championships.
“I attribute this activity to saving my life. I would be dead,” he said. “I have no doubts. This activity straightened me out.”
After about 10 years of teaching debate in California, he and his wife decided to move to Austin, and he accepted a job to coach debate at a charter school, where he stayed for 12 years.
He said he became intrigued with Wiley College after he saw the 2007 movie, “The Great Debaters,” starring Denzel Washington, whose gift to the college reinstated its forensics society.
“I was intrigued. When I saw the job posting online, I said to myself, you know I think I could make a difference with these kids,” he said.
This past week, he met his debate team for the first time. The team has 18 students.
“I was really, really impressed with these students,” he said.
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