Recent performances show optimistic signs for future

The speech and debate team competed in two back-to-back tournaments in late January as the season started to pick up its pace: the Martin Luther King Jr. tournament held at James Logan High on Jan. 20, and the CFL League 2 at Milpitas High on Jan. 27.

At MLK, the team displayed an impressive performance as many participants broke to the final rounds. Senior Aneesa Mazumdar got third in extemporaneous speech, sophomore Supriya Khandekar got fourth in Original Interpretive speech, and seniors Shauray Agrawal and Justin Chiang made the quarterfinals in parliamentary debate.

“It felt really good because all of the hard work I put in paid off, but I think I could have done better,” Mazumdar said.

Also, the Lincoln-Douglas team advanced three debaters to the elimination bracket. Sophomore Rohith Krishna had a preliminary round record of 4-1, and advanced to Double octafinals; sophomore Deepti Kannan had a preliminary round record of 4-1 and advanced to semifinals; senior Venkat Munukutla had a preliminary round record of 5-0 which made him top seed, advanced to quarterfinals and received the top speaker award.

“The L-D team was only formed a year ago, so it's crucial for the team for it to be doing well,” Krishna said. “This will definitely encourage new members to join in new years.”
While members attribute their success to their coach, they also realize that their outside work helped them get here.

“In the future hopefully we can continue to improve. [It’s] definitely possible since the majority of our team is sophomores,” Krishna said.

At the other tournament, League 2, not as many people made it to the out rounds but the team still performed well. Sophomore Ranjini Nagaraj made it to the semifinals in OI, sophomore Jimmy Xiao also made it to semifinals in impromptu and senior Sanjna Verma placed third overall in domestic extemporaneous speaking.

The team’s improved performances in the recent tournaments are optimistic signs for the future, since most of the important tournaments are coming up soon. The Stanford Invitational and Berkeley Invitational, the two largest non-league competitions the team competes in, are on Feb. 9 and Feb. 16 respectively.

This leaves individual members and debate partnerships only two weeks to prepare for tournaments that give bids toward the Tournament of Champions in May. In recent years, the team has sent many participants in various events to this prestigious tournament, and in order to match the performance of previous years, the team needs to continue its uphill trend.