For speech and debaters, the starting months of the year are important for qualifications into higher level tournaments. Perform well and participants can expect to punch their tickets to National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) Grand Nationals, the California High School Speech Association (CHSSA) Championship, the Tournament of Champions and the National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA) National Tournament.
At the National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) qualifier on Jan. 24 in Sacramento, two Public Forum debate pairs — sophomores Saira Julka and Fiona Liu and juniors Tanvee Tirthapura and Sanyukta Ravishankar — landed a spot at NCFL Grand Nationals in Washington, D.C. Tirthapura placed first in speaker points, which ranks a debater’s oratory skills, while Ravishankar placed in the top five.
On the speech side, freshman Anushka Thakur also landed a spot in nationals by achieving the No. 1 spot in the Humorous Interpretation event at the NCFL qualifiers.
“I’m really proud of my performance at NCFL as a whole,” she said. “I feel that NCFL really helped me grow because listening to other people helped me develop my own speech skills.”
The NCFL qualifier’s Public Forum debate event was the most popular in the tournament, seeing four pairs competing: Michael Duan and Richard Chen; Andres Wang and Soham Pradhan; Sanyukta Ravishanker and Tanvee Tirthapura and Saira Julka and Fiona Liu. This year’s topic reads “Resolved: The People’s Republic of China should substantially reduce its international extraction of natural resources.”
Debate rounds mainly revolved around the implications of China’s global mining on the environment and economy, such as China’s production of green technology from their mining endeavors, or their human rights violations in Africa and other continents.
“I really like the Public Forum topic because I enjoy international relations and arguments that have real world implications,” Julka said. “I found this year’s topic much more interesting than the past ones, because it had actual significance in the status quo.”
The same weekend, freshman Diya Ramachandran also gave a 4-0 performance in the JV Lincoln-Douglas event at Coastal Forensics League Super Debate 2 at Milpitas High. At the Columbia Invitational on Jan. 30, freshmen Alvin Shen and Julie Ye made it to the quarterfinals in Public Forum with a 4-2 record in prelims.
However, many members of the club chose not to attend January tournaments to prepare more for the February topic, as topics change every month and be challenging to stay out ahead of.
The February Public Forum topic covers sports betting, while the Lincoln-Douglas topic is either U.S. economic sanctions or U.S. military intervention, depending on which way the votes tip.
Upcoming tournaments include the Berkeley Invitational on Feb. 14 and Coast Forensic League State Qualifiers at Palo Alto High on Feb. 28.
