The speech and debate team started off the new year with a league tournament at Gunn High School on Oct. 11. The events offered were Public Forum and Parliamentary debate.

“Even though nobody went undefeated, it was a really good learning experience for everybody, especially the novices,” said senior Parliamentary co-captain Emily Chen. “I know that we’ll be able to take what we learned here and do even better at the next tournament.”

Saratoga sent 14 teams, nine competing in Parliamentary and five in Public Forum. Two varsity Parliamentary teams of seniors Emily Chen and Megha Raghavan, and sophomores Vijay Menon and Abhishek Venkataramana, and one JV Public Forum team of freshmen Sankash Shankar and Vineet Jain had a record of 3-1.

“I think we did a really good job. It was an excellent start to the year,” said speech and debate head coach Erick Rector.

Coming up for the team is the Individual Event tournament on Oct. 18, but results could not be published due to printing deadlines.