Crossing boundaries in speech and debate

Sixty-nine members of the speech and debate team attended one of the largest tournaments in California, the Cal Invitational in UC Berkeley, from Feb. 16-18, where they had new experiences participating in different events than usual.

“This tournament has literally every serious speech and debater west of the Mississippi River,” said captain Sujay Khandekar. “It’s a travel tournament, so we always have the best time.”

At the Berkeley tournament, only national events are offered, so many team members who usually compete in oratorical interpretation at local tournaments had to change their event to original oratory.

Sophomore Supriya Khandekar, who made it to the quarterfinals in original oratory, said that competing in a new speech event was a rewarding experience.

“Since I had done [oratorical interpretation] from the beginning of the year, I was nervous about trying a new speech at a national tournament,” Supriya said, “but it was worth it in the end.”

In addition to Supriya, freshman Ashvita Ramesh, sophomore Anjali Manghnani and senior Venkat Munukutla advanced to the octofinals in original oratory, and Munukutla also made it to octofinals in impromptu.

The extemporaneous team enjoyed great success as well. Junior Kush Maheshwari and senior Sanjna Verma made it to octofinals, junior Rohan Hardikar and sophomore Agastya Gupta advanced to the quarterfinals, senior Aneesa Mazumdar advanced to semifinals and senior captain Neil Prasad won fourth place out of 185 nationwide competitors.

Aside from the speech team, Saratoga’s parliamentary debaters had to enter in public forum debate because their event was not offered either. Although both events are partner-based, public forum requires preparation for a topic released a month beforehand, whereas parliamentary debaters are given their topic 20 minutes before the debate.

“I guess I was more uncomfortable doing a new event, but it wasn’t that bad,”  senior parliamentary debate captain Justin Chiang said. “It was pretty fun and rewarding intellectually and educationally.”

Although no one from the parliamentary or public forum debate teams advanced to the elimination rounds, sophomore Rohith Krishna and freshman Shrey Desai both made huge achievements in Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Krishna, who had four wins and two losses in preliminary rounds, made it to the triple octofinals, the top 64 debaters out of the 353 total entries. Additionally, Desai had five wins and one loss in the preliminary rounds, allowing him to advance to the octofinals in his first national tournament in JV debate.

“I got to experience a lot of debaters that were really good, and I had a good time,” Desai said. “I got to spend more time with my team and it was like team bonding and it was really fun and exciting.”

After a successful performance at Cal, the individual events team competed at the third league tournament of the year on March 2 at Sequoia High School, with the most number of finalists the team has seen all year.

Captain Ishaan Kolluri and Gupta placed first and sixth in domestic extemporaneous speech, Mazumdar took second in foreign extemporaneous speech, junior Jason Li placed second in original orator, and Supriya won first place in both original oratory and oratorical interpretation.

“It was very gratifying to win in two events. It was really surprising but I was extremely happy too,” Supriya said. “I worked really hard on perfecting my speeches, and it felt great to know that it paid off.”

With a successful last league of the season, the team looks forward to competing at the state qualification tournaments from March 15-17 followed by national qualification tournament from March 22-24.