Team finishes season strong, makes final preparations for CA State Tournament and Nationals

After placing among the top seven at a regional competition, four students have qualified for the state tournament to take place from April 28-30 at Arcadia High School in Pasadena.

Sophomore Arian Raje and junior Kyle Wang qualified in extemporaneous speaking, junior Varun Viswanath qualified in Oratorical Interpretation and junior Divya Rallabandi qualified in Dramatic Interpretation. To prepare, they have been giving practice speeches to each other and making sure that they are able to deliver powerful speeches in the short amount of time given. The qualifiers have also met with speech instructor Mylan Gray to discuss different methods of delivering speech.

“We don’t have a lot of competitors, but we can be the best in our events,” said Viswanath.

For all other team members not going to the state tournament, the season ended on April 2 with Santa Clara University’s 31st Annual Spring Philalethic Invitational. In speech, freshman Ronak Pai placed first in Novice Extemporaneous; sophomore Ishan Lakhani placed second in Open Extemporaneous; freshman Connie Liang placed third in Novice Original Oratory; freshman Anishi Patel placed sixth in novice Oratorical Interpretation; and junior Sahana Sarin semi-finaled in Open Oratorical Interpretation.

In debate, juniors Sathvik Koneru and Karthik Ramachandran placed first in Open Public Forum debate with Ramchandran achieving second place speaker, freshman Riya Kalra and her partner sophomore Reva Vaidya quarter-finaled in Open Policy Debate and sophomore David Koh reached quarter-finaled in Open Lincoln-Douglas Debate.

Shortly after the conclusion of the Santa Clara tournament, the team celebrated another victory as senior Siavash Yaghoobi was selected for the Coast District World Schools Debate Team, a team of three students from all across the Bay Area that are chosen by a board of coaches to compete against other teams from different countries and areas.

Yaghoobi also qualified for nationals as an alternate in Lincoln-Douglas debate during the national district tournament on March 17.

“While I would love to conclude the season debating Lincoln-Douglas, it’s been an honor to have been accepted onto the World Schools Debate team, and I look forward to representing our area,” Yaghoobi said.