Art class helps cadets try new talents

Mrs. Kayla Jones joined the Academy’s staff in 2014 as the Assistant Librarian. Beginning in 2015-16, Mrs. Jones began offering an art curriculum to both Upper and Middle School cadets.

Mrs. Jones attended Lynchburg College, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and minored in Secondary Education. She holds extensive experience working within educational settings, having taught art, theater, history, and English, as well as working with students having special needs. She and her husband, Tripp, live in Fork Union. Her husband is a math teacher in the middle school. Mrs. Jones is also the sponsor for the Academy’s newspaper, The Sabre, and co-sponsor of the Academy yearbook, The Skirmisher.

CLUB SPOTLIGHT: Woodworking Club helps build easels for art class show

COL Chris Nothnagle and the cadets in his woodworking club have been hard at work creating eight wooden easels for use by the art class. The art class hopes to put on an art show for parents during Mothers Day weekend, and these wonderful new easels, works of art themselves, will be used to display the works for view.

Three cadets qualify for the National Debate Tournament

Debate Team takes First Place in Student Congress

Third Place overall at State Debate Meet

The Fork Union Military Academy (FUMA) debate team participated in the Virginia Catholic Forensics League (VCFL) state debate tournament on Saturday, March 11th at Eastern View High School in Culpepper County, Virginia. The team placed first in the sub-category of Student Congress, and placed third overall in the state tournament.

Team points are accumulated based on individual performances in three debate categories: Student Congress, Public Forum (a two-on-two style debate), and Lincoln-Douglas. Fork Union had cadets competing in only two of the three categories: Student Congress and Public Forum.

According to Fork Union’s debate coach, Mike Goad, “We knew that we were going to do well in Student Congress. Year in and year out, this is our strongest category. I really thought our three Public Forum teams had a shot at making it to the finals. Their arguments were strong, and they were well prepared. However, when you’re at the discretion of human judges, things do not always go as planned. They left nothing on the table.”

The three schools accumulating the most individual points in these three categories get to take home a sweepstakes trophy from the state tournament. “Our goal this year was to ‘trophy’ at states. We wanted to bring home the hardware. The schools we compete against have much larger student bodies, making it easier for them to disperse talented students in all three categories of debate. We knew our backs were against the wall by only having cadets in two of three categories, but we refused to let this hindrance be an excuse,” said Goad. Despite not having members qualify in the Lincoln-Douglas category, Fork Union was able to achieve their pre-season goal of bringing a sweepstakes trophy back to campus, something the debate team has failed to do in recent history.

Anchoring the team’s overall success was the team’s first place finish in the Student Congress sub-category where Fork Union placed three cadets in the top-four, guaranteeing each of these students a spot at the National Catholic Forensic League’s (NCFL) national tournament to be held on Memorial Day weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Cadets Michael Head, William Pessaud, and Joshua Henriques placed first, third and fourth respectively in Student Congress. Head also finished first in 2016. The Student Congress category is run much like the House or Senate chamber, wherein students debate bills submitted by each school on VCFL-mandated topics. Two sessions of legislative debate lasting two hours are then completed at each meet. The state meet’s hottest topics included bills on the following: dissolution of the Department of Education, One-China Policy, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and Medicare/Medicaid Expansion.