Students see success in competitions, scholarships

March 2, 2022 — by Selina Chen, Allen Luo, Jonny Luo and Nikhil Mathihalli
Portrayed in a sketched by a courtroom artist, senior mock trial president Nicole Lu competes at the Santa Clara County Mock Trial Competition.
The robotics team, speech and debate team, Model UN and Mock Trial saw numerous students win prestigious awards, while two seniors advanced to regional finalist status for the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation.

Students from multiple clubs have recently achieved competitive success, allowing for some to participate in  higher-level competitions.

The Robotics team MSET Jellyfish, led by senior team captain Daniel Jiang, won the prestigious Inspire Award at the Sunnyvale Qualifying Tournament on Jan. 29. By earning the highest possible ranking, they snatched a spot at the Northern California regional competition, which will take place March 11-13.

The speech and debate team competed at the National Catholic Forensics League (NCFL) qualifiers on Jan. 29-30. Three students qualified to the NCFL nationals in Washington, D.C., on May 28 and 29: Freshman Timothy Leung placed first in Dramatic Performance, while freshmen Ashish Goswami and Leonardo Jia placed as first speaker and second speaker, respectively, in public forum debate.

In Model UN, all six students who competed at the Santa Clara Valley Model UN conference on Jan. 28 and 29 earned an award: Sophomores Sanjoli Gupta and Maithreyi Bharathi won outstanding delegates, freshmen Anushka Tadikonda and Will Norwood won honorable mentions, while junior Shaan Sridhar and sophomore Tara Natarajan won verbal commendations.

Mock Trial competed in the Santa Clara County Mock Trial Competition, where the team’s defense and prosecution team competed in two rounds each, judged by practicing attorneys. The defense team won one round on Jan. 25 against Yerba Buena and the prosecution team won one round on Feb. 3 against Los Altos.

Additionally, seniors Vignav Ramesh and Anouk Yeh became two of the 250 Coca-Cola Scholars regional finalists from a pool of 65,000 applicants, from which 150 national finalists will be chosen to receive a $20,000 scholarship.

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