Speech and debate brings home success

The speech and debate team ended a successful season with a bang at the state competition on April 25 at James Enochs High School in Modesto.

Junior Anjali Manghnani was a semifinalist in original oratory, junior Supriya Khandekar placed sixth in oratorical interpretation and sophomore Shrey Desai double octafinaled in Lincoln-Douglas debate, among top 32 in the state.  Senior Mohith Subbarao also competed in the state competition in original oratory.

“Having  four people qualify from our school is fantastic,” Manghnani said. “I am beyond proud.”

Desai credited coaches Erick Rector and Chris Harris for their work with team members.

For next year, the goal is to step up their game so that they can qualify for nationals.

As always, the speech and debate team in in search of new talent.

“As captain, I hope to encourage more students to join the program and to push those already in it to greater heights, because I know they are capable of accomplishing amazing things,” Manghnani said.

The team also put up a remarkable performance at the Santa Clara University Philalethic invitational on April 12-13. Sophomores Ashvita Ramesh, Vibha Seshadri and Meghan Shah advanced to elimination rounds, and freshman Mitali Shanbhag advanced all the way to finals, where she took first place out of 25 competitors.

“Our speech team always does well at tournaments,” junior Jerry Yang said. “But at SCU, even our debate team succeeded.”

In parliamentary debate, a team event, Yang and junior Rohan Bhardwaj and sophomores Michael Ren and Alex Guo advanced to elimination rounds. Desai continued his outstanding season by winning the tournament in Lincoln-Douglas Debate.

“[Desai] had one of the best tournaments of his debate  career,” Yang said. “Not only did he win the tournament, but he also didn’t drop a single ballot.”

Desai went 5-0 in the preliminary rounds, and all three judges voted for him in every elimination round.

As a whole, this speech and debate season was very successful, and they hope the winning ways will continue through the nationals tournament on June 16-20 in Overland Park, Kans.

Qualifying at the end of March, junior Deepti Kannan will attend nationals in Lincoln-Douglas debate and junior Jimmy Xiao in extemporaneous speech.