Speech and debate team earns finalist spots, awards

Throughout February and March, speech and debaters have worked tirelessly to gain coveted spots to state and national tournaments. When the string of consecutive tournaments came to an end, four won the chance to compete at the state tournaments.

At the Parliamentary and Public Forum debate state qualifying tournament held at Leland High on Feb 26., seniors Aakash Thumaty and Alex Li went undefeated with a 5-0 record, qualifying for both the Tournament of Champions as well as the state tournament.

In parliamentary debate, teams are assigned their topic and position (affirmative or negative) just before the round, giving them 20 minutes to come up with their arguments.

In their final round, Thumaty and Li held the affirmative position for the topic: “Resolved: California should ban the extraction of water for out-of-state usage.” Li said that because both he and Thumaty are taking AP Environmental Science, they were well aware of potential arguments for the topic.

“It was especially fulfilling to win this highly competitive tournament and represent the South Bay in the state tournament," Li said. “Our plan for states is to redeem [class of 2015 alumni] Sudeep Raj and Michael Ong, Parliamentary debate captains from last year who lost in the final round on a 3-2 split decision.”

Individual events competitors also found success at the Feb. 28 qualifying tournament at Milpitas High School. Sophomores Divya Rallabandi and Varun Viswanath placed first and second, respectively, in Oratorical Interpretation, and will compete at the state tournament. Freshman Arian Raje and sophomore Kyle Wang made it to semifinals in extemporaneous speaking at the same tournament, but did not qualify for states.

“I knew I would do well at the tournament because I spent hours preparing,” Viswanath said. “Now I know what I have to do to win at states, and that’s exactly what I’m aiming to do.”

Most recently, the team competed at the state qualifier tournament for Lincoln Douglas (LD) and Policy debate at Santa Clara University on March 4-5.

Those students included four Lincoln Douglas debaters: senior Shrey Desai, sophomore Austin Wang and freshmen Victor Liu and Hanlin Sun. Before each round, each debater in LD was assigned to the affirmative or negative side, and had to argue that position against their opponent who had been assigned the other position. They debated the March/April topic, “The U.S. ought to promote democracy in the Middle East,” at the tournament. Wang went 4-1, making it to the elimination rounds, but was eliminated after the first round by a 2-1 vote by the judges.

Desai and Sun went 3-2 at the tournament and were one ballot short of making the elimination rounds. Desai also garnered the title of second speaker at the tournament, meaning he was assigned the second most speaker points by judges. Liu went 1-4 and did not make it to the elimination rounds.

“With limited time, it's extremely vital that debaters learn how to ‘condense’ the debate efficiently and effectively, and I definitely learned a lot about these topics from debating at [the state qualifying tournament],” Desai said.

On Feb. 21, Desai and junior Siavash Yaghoobi competed in the California Forensics League (CFL) Policy/LD tournament at Sequoia High School.

The tournament did not contain any elimination rounds, but both Desai and Yaghoobi went 2-2. Desai said this tournament was important because it gave him the chance to practice his arguments for the March-April topic for the LD state qualifying tournament and national qualifying tournament.

The national qualifying tournament for LD will take place on March 18-19 at Bellarmine College Preparatory.