The speech and debate team will attend its first national travel tournament of the year at the Golden Desert Invitational tournament in Las Vegas on Feb. 1-4.
“Golden Desert is the first travel tournament where we have a good amount of people going,” senior captain Ishaan Kolluri said. “Everything else are commute or league [tournaments]. It's an invitational with participants all over the nation.”
The high level of competition at the Golden Desert tournament meant only varsity members could apply to go. Coach Erick Rector said he selected 10 students to participate in the tournament based on their performance in varsity level tournaments.
Seniors Kolluri, Sujay Khandekar, Neil Prasad and Venkat Munukutla, along with juniors Parth Kejrwal, Justin Liu, Aditya Choudhary, Ajith Kosireddy, Jason Li and sophomore Rohith Krishna will be participating in the tournament in their respective events.
Since the tournament is taking place outside of California, the costs will be higher than regular tournaments. Rector said the estimated cost for the entire trip will be about $500 per person.
In addition to increased costs, the captains and coaches will have more responsibilities, especially regarding keeping track of the students and organizing travel and lodging.
Rector anticipates that the travel tournament will be fun, yet stressful.
“I expect that I will get very little sleep because I’ll be running around worrying about all the students that are there,” Rector said.
Kolluri echoed Rector’s concerns, stressing the importance of staying safe and following the rules.
“It's a privilege to attend the tournament on behalf of the school, and in order to make sure SHS comports themselves well, I really hope the students stay close together, don't get into trouble or get lost,” Kolluri said.
Despite all the extra logistical troubles, Kolluri said Golden Desert will help students gain the practice and skills they need to succeed in the upcoming local tournaments.
“It will show them the type of competition they can face at the highest level of competition, and give them something to aim for or to surpass,” Kolluri said. “The skills you learn can help you do much better at league.”
While preparing for the Golden Desert tournament, the team also competed at the James Logan MLK invitational tournament on Jan. 18-20.
Additionally, the team looks forward to competing at the second league tournament for all events on Jan. 26-27, the Stanford invitational on Feb. 9-11 and the Berkeley invitational on Feb. 16-18.