Hometown speech expert finds celebrity thanks to debate debacle

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  • Jason Stahl
    Jason Stahl
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On the day after the first presidential debate between Pres. Donald Trump and Vice-Pres. Joe Biden, WSMV asked Jason Stahl, a native of Grassy Creek in Pendleton County, for his take on the value of what the nation had witnessed. Soon after, C-SPAN also asked Stahl to discuss the debate that was to happen Thursday, October 22, 2020, at Belmont University in Nashville.
    While the first debate was, according to Stahl, a prime example of how not to debate, and the second was lackluster in other ways, the big question for Pendleton County is this: why did both a Nashville news station and C-SPAN, the network that “televises many proceedings of the U.S. federal government, as well as other public affairs programming,” seek to speak to a man who grew up in a little area of Pendleton County that boasts, not of a political headquarters, but a church and post office as its most prominent features?
    The answer: Stahl is the director of forensics at Belmont, the site of the second presidential debate that also boasts a team that has won multiple awards for its forensics team. Many of those awards have come under Stahl’s coaching.
    Before anyone falls into a state of confusion regarding his title as director of forensics, Stahl is quick to explain. “According to Aristotle, ‘forensics’ means ‘to build a case.’ That means that a person who debates builds a case depending on a given topic.” While he concedes that CSI forensics does that in its way, and that even a true debate could revolve around such cases, the debates that his teams are in line with what is known as academic case theory—in other words, they are usually political in nature.
    Forensics, however, is not limited to debate. Public speaking and competitive theater are also involved. Through his 15 plus years as the head of the coaching staff for Belmont forensics team, Stahl’s teams have come home with many state championships as well as national championships for Christian school competitions, with Belmont falling into that category.
    It is not an easy task. “Every year is a new process,” Stahl shares. “Other schools have scholarships to help recruit high school students who do well on debate teams. Belmont has no scholarships for speech and debate. The students have to love it to volunteer their time. We train a new group of speech and debate every year, so we have a lot of ebb and sway in our program.”
    He has no problem recounting his proudest moments regarding his teams. “One year, we took four kids to national event for speaking and acting. It had no debate. A lot of other schools came in with large teams. At the end of the event, we placed thirteenth in the nation. All four of our kids placed in multiple areas at that event.”
    He also held high hopes for the team the school had last academic season. “In Novice, we had the best year we had in a long time. We were supposed to have three nationals, and the first one was in Rome, GA. We got second place there. We were to move on into the other competitions, but then COVID hit and shut down the competitions.”
    Stahl’s enthusiasm about his work is evident as you speak with him; oddly, where he is now is not exactly where he had planned to go.
    Even during his years of high school, Pendleton County did not have a speech and debate team; however, his interest was piqued by the topic. “Millie Puckett (a former teacher at Pendleton County High School) had competed in speech and debate, and she talked about bringing a team together at Pendleton to compete, but it just never worked out.”
    When he arrived at Georgetown College in the fall of 1994, however, he encountered the coach of the speech and debate team at the Kentucky school. He competed throughout his four years as an undergrad. After that, everything he did seemed to lead back to forensics.
    “I was a graduate assistant with the debate team when I was working on my master’s at Western Kentucky University. At that time, that team was in the top three in the nation. I had gone from a small school to a large school.”
    When he decided to continue his studies at Louisiana State University, he knew he was leaving speech and debate behind. Then tragedy struck. “The graduate assistant who was coaching the team there passed away suddenly during my second year. They came to me because they knew my background. I ended up coaching the rest of the year.
    “Then, I went to Malone [University] in Canton, Ohio to study communication, leaving speech and debate behind again. While I was there, the coach admitted she had never competed before, so I ended up coaching there.
    “So then I decided I may as well go to Belmont and become the director of forensics!”
    In the past several years at Belmont, he has not only become a respected coach of speech and debate, but he has also taken on the role as one of four sponsors of Belmont’s Enactus group, an organization that, according to Stahl, “merges entrepreneurship with social entrepreneurship—a people-oriented business.” Enactus holds a World Cup competition, and in the two years Belmont has competed in the competition, the team come in third place and then in first place. Stahl describes his work as more behind-the-scenes as he writes scripts, works with presenters, and works with AV.
    Professionally, he keeps finding success, and personally, he has successfully challenged himself, too. In the past two to three years, he has lost 185 pounds, has begun lifting weights, and he has continued his success in weight loss in spite of his quarantine hobby of baking and decorating--a skill he took on honestly from his mother, Margaret Ann Stahl.
And even with his busy schedule, he decided to return to school to earn his Ph.D. in Education as a Doctor of Educational Technology, following up on his minor in computer science from undergrad. He finds this decision kind of odd considering the timing. “Here I am, a teacher of communication, and I decided to focus on my technology minor. It seemed weird, but then COVID hit, and now we have merged communications and technology more than ever because of the pandemic.
    “My paths just keep lining up.”