I am honored to nominate Eric Forslund, Director of Debate at Pace Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, for the Chuck Ballingall Educator of the Year Award to be presented at the 2026 National Debate Coaches Association Tournament. Eric embodies the qualities this award celebrates: exceptional teaching, deep commitment to students, competitive excellence, and a lifelong dedication to the debate community.

Eric has devoted more than 25 years to debate as a competitor, coach, and educator. After graduating college as a collegiate All-American debater, he coached at the University of Wyoming, where he helped the program return to a Top 25 national ranking for the first time in more than 30 years. He later spent 14 years coaching high school debate, including 12 years at Greenhill School in Dallas and two years at Damien High School, where he worked closely with and admired Chuck Ballingall. During his coaching career, Eric’s teams have reached the finals of multiple national championships and earned the Baker Award for the best regular season in policy debate, reflecting both competitive success and sustained program excellence.

Since becoming Director of Debate at Pace Academy in Fall 2020, Eric has continued to demonstrate his ability to build thriving educational programs even under challenging circumstances. Taking over during the COVID-19 pandemic, he successfully transitioned the program to online debate while maintaining student engagement and participation. Nearly all debaters remained active through the pandemic years, and the program has since grown and re-energized. Pace debaters have advanced to elimination rounds at major regional tournaments, qualified multiple students to the NDCA Tournament, and earned bids to the 2024, 2025, and 2026 Tournament of Champions.

Beyond competitive success, Eric has strengthened debate as an educational institution at Pace. He has expanded the program by hiring community coaches, helping bring Whit Whitmore on as a full-time teacher and assistant coach, and integrating debate more deeply into the school curriculum through beginning, intermediate, and advanced debate courses. Eric also teaches public speaking classes that introduce non-debaters to argumentation, research, and communication skills. Many students who take these courses become interested in joining the debate team, discovering through Eric’s teaching that debate is both intellectually rewarding and deeply engaging.

Eric’s influence extends far beyond the school year through his extraordinary commitment to summer debate education. For over a decade he has been a central figure at the Michigan 7 Week Debate Camp, where he teaches the top rising seniors lab each summer. Debate camps are famously demanding—often running from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week—but Eric’s dedication goes even further. While others rest or socialize after long days, Eric can often be found late at night researching new articles, compiling citations, preparing lectures, editing student work, and helping produce the extensive research files that thousands of students across the country rely on throughout the season. His lectures—especially on politics, research methods, and international relations—are consistently rated among the best at camp, reflecting the enormous preparation and care he brings to teaching. He also develops creative teaching tools such as trivia games and interactive exercises to help students learn in ways that are both rigorous and enjoyable.

Those who work closely with Eric see firsthand the qualities that make him such a remarkable educator. Over the course of long summers at debate camp, he demonstrates the patience, intellectual curiosity, and mentorship that define great teachers. He engages seriously with all types of arguments both as a judge and researcher, prepares thoughtful and well-crafted lectures, produces widely used debate files, and models the technological and research skills that modern debaters need. Equally important, he fosters an inclusive learning environment where women and minority students feel welcomed and supported, and he is skilled at resolving interpersonal conflicts in ways that ensure every student feels respected and comfortable. Eric combines intellectual rigor with humility and humor—qualities that make students eager to learn from him.

Perhaps the clearest testament to Eric’s impact comes from his students. Former debaters frequently describe his teaching as transformative, shaping not only their debate careers but their broader intellectual development. Students credit him with teaching them the art of persuasion, how to research and evaluate complex issues, and how to communicate ideas effectively. Many continue to draw on those lessons years later as coaches, professionals, and engaged citizens. Some even trace their continued involvement in debate directly to the inspiration and mentorship they received in Eric’s classroom.

Eric’s commitment to students extends well beyond the competitive season. From organizing summer practice debates to offering detailed feedback and guidance, he consistently goes above and beyond to help students grow as thinkers and advocates. His mentorship often sparks lasting interests in politics, civil discourse, and civic engagement, demonstrating his belief that debate is not merely a competitive activity but a powerful educational tool.

In every dimension—teacher, mentor, coach, researcher, and community leader—Eric Forslund exemplifies the values that the Chuck Ballingall Educator of the Year Award is meant to recognize. His decades of service, commitment to students, and passion for debate education have profoundly shaped countless debaters and strengthened the activity as a whole.

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On a cold November morning in Queens, Tabroom just crashed as Collegiate Director of Debate, Teja Vepa, and I were working on pairings for one of the largest post-pandemic New York City area local tournaments. While we were small potatoes compared to the Shirley that were also facing the Tabroom crisis, this was an important moment for us. Several coaches have been working to revive debate in the metropolitan area and to create more competitive tournaments with enthusiastic judges; no one worked harder to achieve these ends than Teja Vepa. Toward that end of creating a circuit worthy of the students of New York, New Jersey, and beyond, the Tri-State Debate League was fomented to service students from independent schools to charters to Title I public schools. As a new circuit faced with our first true challenge, our credibility with directors who’ve seen energetic upstart projects come and go were dangling in the hands of overworked servers in the cornfields of Iowa.

As the delay grew closer to the one-hour mark, coaches, judges, and debaters started to get antsy - and that’s when Teja took over the reins and started to code out pairings for four different debate formats by hand. As the only one who literally knew how to do this in the old school format without Tabroom.com, the competence and dedication to ensuring the best tournament experience was on full display. The rest of the tab staff continued to rely on him during the morning where over a hundred debaters were indebted to Mr. Vepa’s efforts.

There really isn’t a better illustration of Teja Vepa’s know-how, steadfastness, and a vision of the activity that is rooted in generosity; it’s those same qualities that makes him a deserving candidate for this year’s iteration of the NDCA Chuck Ballingall Educator of the Year award. He has been an ardent advocate of debate at every level from the national circuit to urban debate leagues, a tremendous full-service director who services his students to be among the most competitive in their region and beyond, and a pinnacle of support for coaches and judges in his local community.

As a long-time director on the West Coast, Mr. Vepa led an excellent programme to unprecedented heights at the Polytechnic School in Los Angeles. Eventually, he came over to the East Coast where Mr. Vepa became the Senior Debate Program Specialist at the Success Academy network of charter schools. As one of the largest charter operations in the country, Mr. Vepa oversaw the entire matrix of Debate students at Success Academy from second grade Impromptu all the way up to the Tournament of Champions calibre Policy Debate teams and literally every child in between. Mr. Vepa led and oversaw a massive radical restructuring of the entire Debate curriculum and lesson planning to better assist first time coaches with little to no formal competitive debate experience. Transferably and directly himself, he instructed students to be the best versions of themselves.

In his current role at the Collegiate School, his deep impact on the programme couldn’t have been better timed. As senior captain Luke Kosner tells it, “Mr. Vepa inherited a squad of eight students and transformed it into a nationally competitive program within two years. His organizational and marketing skills were important to this success, but his passionate instruction was absolutely central.” Taking a programme on life support and enrolling nearly over 25% of the high school’s student body in Debate in an almost overnight fashion may give the impression that corners were cut and that shortcuts on culture were the price of winning, but sophomore Policy debate Ranbeer Arora explains that process isn’t sacrificed at Collegiate, “Beyond these successes, Mr. Vepa has redefined debate at Collegiate as a space for curiosity, reflection, and intellectual growth. He encourages students to think deeply, write clearly, and approach arguments with both rigor and empathy. His guidance has created a team known not only for excellence in competition but for thoughtfulness and collaboration.”

No school has hosted more events, workshoppes, or tournaments than Teja Vepa. He is a trusted community member who is incredibly generous with institutional support with the Collegiate resources to ensure that the quality coaching and instruction his students receive is also enjoyed by students from other schools by encouraging robust judging and free workshoppe expectations for his staff, and also hosting the New York City Ronald Reagan Presidential Debate Qualifier. Mr. Vepa also dutifully serves on the New York City National Speech & Debate Association District Committee, where he is an active and trusted tabulation czar who has built a reputation on his transparency and efficiency. As aforementioned, he serves the Tri-State Debate League as a programming and tabulation specialist. As coaches enter the tabroom, they’re likely to strike up an organic conversation with him as he effortlessly provides advice, guidance, and a lending ear. This year, the Columbia University Debate Society approached him for professional insight on how to host a better tournament for the community, only to have him end up advising them, training them on Tabroom, and effectively becoming a tournament host who tabulated the tournament. He has also helped lead the Loyola tournament tabulation crew, which undoubtedly hosts one of the best Lincoln-Douglas tournaments in the nation. The degree of excellence in the tournaments and circuits in which he assists is no accident; it’s the result of relentless hard work and commitment that very few will ever be able to witness, let alone appropriately appreciate.

For these reasons and a plethora more that a letter simply cannot do justice, I emphatically endorse him for this award. I find myself looking back on the Wake weekend, where Teja quite literally saved the tournament by himself. Fortunately, Tabroom came back to life right as Mr. Vepa started making the virtual version of laid out index cards to manually pair rounds. Despite us not using these relics fit for the past, the fact that he was able to so quickly conceptualise how to manually tab begged the question of how this millennial could pull this off. His answer? His former mentor and legendary debate coach at Damien, Mr. Chuck Ballingall. As we strolled to grab a cup of lukewarm coffee, he explained how Chuck had taken Teja under his wing and painstakingly, from the most rudimentary and foundational levels, how to manually tabulate rounds and ensure the most accurate and equitable tournament experience for students. Hearing these tales of reverence for Mr. Ballingall was really a portal into the values that comprise Teja’s own coaching philosophy: commitment to rigor and process, tenacity in ensuring you get things right for others to the point you don’t get them wrong, and being a beacon of support for children of all stripes, to coaches of all calibres, and to anyone who’s fortunate enough to find themselves in his orbit. I truly cannot think of a more fitting award for such an apropos candidate - I hope you will join me in celebrating this serendipity as yet another reason why this feels right to award Mr. Teja Vepa the 2026 NDCA Chuck Ballingall Educator of the Year award.