Over the weekend of April 26-27, two important speech and debate tournaments took place: the highly competitive Tournament of Champions (TOC) and National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) Last Chance Qualifier.
At the TOC, the speech and debate team made it to quarterfinals, and at NSDA Last Chance, the team was one ballot away from qualifying.
Held at the University of Kentucky, months of debating led up to the TOC; competitors had to deliver standout performances at other tournaments in order to receive bids to qualify.
Seniors Leonardo Jia and Ashish Goswami reached quarterfinals in the gold division of Public Forum debate, keeping up their hot streak of doing well at the TOC. Last year, they made it to the semifinal round.
“I think every debater dreams of making it to quarterfinals, especially at our last TOC,” Goswami said.
Despite entering the tournament with less preparation than previous years, Jia and Goswami, having done debate for all four years of high school, outmaneuvered their opponents through experience. An additional accomplishment was awarded to Goswami as he placed 16th, and Jia as he placed 22nd, out of 236 competitors in speaker points.
The team had other accomplishments: Competing in Public Forum Gold, juniors Jet Tsang and Anthony Luo had a winning record in preliminary rounds, but narrowly missed breaking past the elimination rounds. Sophomores Sanyukta Ravishankar and Tanvee Tirthapura also attended Public Forum Silver, winning two rounds.
Besides the TOC, the team performed well at the NSDA Last Chance Qualifiers. Sophomore Richard Chen and senior Skyler Mao participated online in public forum debate to earn a spot at the NSDA National Tournament, finishing preliminary rounds with a 5-1 record before a close 1-2 split ended their run in elimination rounds.
As the season comes to a close, the team hopes to do well in their remaining tournaments, like the National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) in late May and NSDA Nationals in early June. Goswami, Jia, Luo, Tsang, Ravishankar and Tirthapura will compete in both.
“We’re headed to NCFL in Chicago, and I would love to see [the team] break and go deep in elimination rounds. I think that’s very possible,” Goswami said. “I know that the speech team will also be there, and so I’m hoping if we could get a national champion or two, that would be really great.”
For Chen, coming one vote away from qualifying for NSDA Nationals fueled his future ambitions.
“I definitely want to go to TOC next year, so I’m going to need to break out more tournaments and make it past early elimination rounds to get a bid,” he said.
