HPHS student repeats dad’s debate championship 39 years later
Most families are fortunate to see one debate state championship, but the wins are becoming a tradition for David Coale and his son, Camden.
Highland Park High School junior Camden and his partner Layton Braziel earned both the 2025 UIL 5A state championship title in cross examination debate and a place in history this spring. 39 years earlier, David Coale was one-half of the duo that brought home the same 4A state championship for Allen ISD.
The Coales have done their research — a must-have skill for any debater — and believe that they are the only father-son pair to ever repeat the UIL win. But the victories’ significance didn’t become clear to them until after Camden and Layton brought the state championship home to Highland Park.
“Immediately afterwards, we got the picture together and I was like, ‘Oh, that was a cool fact,’” Camden said. “I didn’t know it was the first ever.”
The state championship was the culmination of a debate season that started before the first day of the 2024-25 school year. Teams that don’t prepare for their topic in the summer, Camden said, are already behind when competitions begin.
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Last year’s debaters were tasked with arguing either for or against the resolution: “The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.”
Students had to prepare to argue both sides of the proposition — the position they took in each debate was determined by a coin toss — as well as to answer questions posed by their opponents during a three-minute cross examination period.
The dress-code for UIL debaters, who still wear suits, hasn’t changed much in the almost four decades since he was a high schooler, David said. But the massive amount of paper that his team had to haul around on a dolly has been replaced by a laptop, a change that has improved responses to cross examination questions.
“Everybody would be shuffling around, looking for papers,” David said. “It was basically a clean-up time. Now … they can actually ask questions about the substance.”
Though the Coale family has lots of discussions at home, its members don’t do much debating. Camden stumbled upon debate “kind of randomly,” when he happened to put it on his schedule as a freshman at HPHS and enjoyed the class.
Father and son have since done some practice around the table but have only debated each other twice.
“Not to brag,” Camden said. “But I’m pretty sure I’m 2 and 0.”
Camden, who will be a senior at HPHS this year, hopes to repeat his UIL victory, as well as win the state championship from the Texas Forensic Association, which also organizes high school speech and debate competitions.
That would bring his state championship total to three. David, who went on to win a national championship with the team from Harvard College, only earned two Texas state titles, one from the UIL and one from the Texas Forensic Association.
“It’s a family business,” Camden said. “I didn’t start debating because of my dad, but it’d be really hard to ignore the fact that my dad was really good at debate before I did it.”
