Team displays impressive performance as state qualifiers near

Once again, the speech and debate team displayed an impressive performance at the Coast Forensic League Tournament 3, with many schools such as Milpitas, Bellarmine, and Leland, on March 2. 

Sophomore Supriya Khandekar won original oratory and original interpretive, individual events captain junior Jason Li finaled in original oratory, extemporaneous speaking captain senior Aneesa Mazumdar placed second in foreign extemporaneous speaking and extemporaneous speaking captain senior Ishaan Kolluri won the domestic extemporaneous speaking competition.

“I’m glad we did so well because it shows how hard we have been working, and I think this means our team is just going to get better and better,” Mazumdar said. 

Throughout the season, the team has sent participants to the final round of every tournament, but never has a student won two events at a single tournament until this tournament.

“It was very rewarding to win in two events. I was especially happy because the competition was so tough,” Khandekar said. “There were competitors that I hadn’t beaten in my freshman year that I was able to beat this time.”

One major aspect of each tournament is that at the end, students receive ballots that the judges use to write comments and evaluate the student’s speech. 

“In comparison to other tournaments, I referred more than I usually do to my comment cards that I received from Cal [Invitational] and Stanford Invitational,” Khandekar said. “I tried to fix any problems the judges pointed out in order to improve.”

Kolluri also changed the way he prepared for this tournament.

“I prepared a great deal harder than before, because this tournament is a decent indicator of the difficulty of the state qualifier tournament,” Kolluri said, “I do decently at these tournaments, but I rarely take first, so I definitely felt very proud that I was able to do it for my last ever league tournament.”

On Sunday, March 25, seniors Aneesa Mazumdar Sujay Khandekar, Venkat Munukutla, and Ishaan Kolluri qualified for the National tournament. Sophomore Supriya Khandekar semifinaled at the tournament but did not qualify.