Junior Varun Parmar recently made it to States at the Congress qualifiers at Harker on March 7. Junior Saniha Shankar made it as first alternate.

The State Qualifiers are the culmination of the entire year, with all teams bidding for a spot to States.

The speech and debate team’s season is winding down, with the team also recently competing at the California State Qualifiers at Bellarmine High School on Feb. 28 to March 1.

“I think everybody did a really admirable job. It was a really tough competition—definitely the toughest [league] in the state in terms of debate,” said head coach English teacher Erick Rector.

The first half of Individual Events competed on Feb. 28, with four students breaking to Semifinals. Freshman Michael Chen and sophomore Vance Lindholm made it in National Extemporaneous, and sophomore Nikhil Maheshwari and junior Saniha Shankar broke in Impromptu speaking.

On Sunday, the Parliamentary team sent five teams to Bellarmine, but although seniors Adeeti Aggarwal and Connie Shang went 4-1, no teams made it to semifinals.

“The team is young and we have a lot of time to improve,” said senior team captain Farid Jiandani. “I’m proud of the team.”