The entire debate team made it to high elimination rounds at its first varsity tournament at the sixth Annual Robert Garcia invitational, out of the hundreds of total participants, at St. Francis High School, on Sept 17.

The team sent sophomore David Koh, juniors Ayush Aggarwal, Sathvik Koneru, Gaurav Mohan, Karthik Ramachandran, Arun Ramakrishna, Austin Wang and senior Siavash Yaghoobi to the tournament.

All teams advanced to octofinals, with Ramachandran and Koneru advancing to quarters in public forum, and Wang advancing to quarters in Lincoln Douglas.

Wang began his preparation for the tournament during the last weeks of summer when the topic of the Lincoln Douglas debate was released.

“I could have definitely won with a different strategy, but my opponent was really good so overall I am happy with making it to quarterfinals and fourth speaker,” Wang said.

Yaghoobi, who reached octofinals in Public Forum debate with his partner Gaurav Mohan, also improved his skills in the summer. For two weeks in August, Yaghoobi attended a camp at UCLA, where he worked with the same topic he would compete with in tournaments until October, as topics change every two months.

“We had high expectations for this topic given the amount of preparation we put in,” Yaghoobi said.

Yaghoobi said he felt that his expectations were met for the tournament. However, he hopes to advance to later elimination rounds in the future.

With their experience from this tournament, Yaghoobi, Wang and the rest of the team know what to focus on for their upcoming competitions.

“I definitely learned a lot about what I need to improve on by reviewing my rounds, and I hope to place higher in future tournaments,” Wang said.