During the awards ceremony of the national qualifying tournament, junior Deepti Kannan and three other competitors from Bellarmine were called as finalists in Lincoln-Douglas debate.
A crowd of speech and debaters, parents and coaches from all over the Bay Area grew silent as the Bellarmine coach prepared to announce the qualifiers to the national championships. The tournament began with the top 36 debaters in the Coast Forensics League (CFL) and only four were left.
Three of them were going to qualify for nationals in Lincoln-Douglas debate while the other was going to be an alternate.
“I was trembling when the four of us were up there,” Kannan said. “The announcer said, ‘The alternate to the national champions is from Bellarmine…’ and that’s when I knew I had qualified. The rest of her sentence was drowned out in my surprise and happiness. I just couldn’t believe it.”
The speech and debate team had much success at the national qualifying tournament, which ran from March 22-24 at Bellarmine College Preparatory, with Kannan and junior Jimmy Xiao qualifying for nationals in Lincoln-Douglas debate and domestic extemporaneous speech respectively.
The school can only send its best four competitors in each event: Kannan, junior Rohith Krishna and sophomore Shrey Desai participated in Lincoln-Douglas debate, while juniors Supriya Khandekar and Anjali Maghnani and seniors Mohith Subbarao and Jason Li participated in original oratory.
Desai became third alternate to nationals, Subbarao placed fifth in his event and Khandekar advanced to semifinals.
In addition, seniors Parth Kejriwal and Justin Liu participated in public forum debate, a team event. The duo made the qualifying round and lost, making them second alternate to the national championships.
Kannan said she is proud of the rapid progress of the Lincoln-Douglas debate team. As of this tournament, they have had two national qualifiers in a row, starting with alumnus Venkat Munukutla.
“We only really have three varsity members, yet we are constantly improving,” Kannan said. “I hope that underclassmen will see these successes as inspiration to join the team and try [Lincoln-Douglas debate] out.”
The national tournament will be held on June 16-20 in Overland Park, Kans. In order to prepare for the tournament, Kannan plans on doing a lot of practice rounds with her team and the other qualifiers from Bellarmine.
“Regardless of how I do, I know it will be a great experience and I’m honored to represent Saratoga and the Bay Area at nationals this summer,” Kannan said.