Debate
by Greg Achten and Jenny Alme
Great Start for Speech and Debate Season The speech and debate team is off to an amazing start in the 2015-16 competition season, with scores of students already attending tournaments. Perhaps most impressive, the team has experienced success across the entire program, with many awards won by young students in their first or second year of competition. Photos by Mark Kocina
Broad-Based Team Success Each division of the large speech and debate team has had notable accomplishments this year. Nearly every trip has produced multiple awards while helping students hone their skills. In public forum debate, Abhinav Ketineni, Eesha Chona, Sorjo Banerjee, Jasmine Liu and Suraj Jagadeesh, grade 12; Alexander Lam and Emaad Raghib, grade 11; Emily Chen and Karena Kong, grade 10; and Cindy Wang, Clarissa Wang, Ashwin Rammohan and Erana Wan, grade 9, have all won awards in tournament competition. In congressional debate, juniors Aditya Dhar and Michael Tseitlin, and freshman Jason Huang have placed highly.
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In Lincoln-Douglas debate, Karen Qi, grade 12; Srivatsav Pyda, grade 11; and grade 9 students Neha Tallapragada, Kelly Shen, Satvik Narasimhan and Suraj Pakala have experienced success and won awards at tournaments. In speech, Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 9, and juniors Divya Rajasekharan, Sana Aladin and Andrew Tierno have performed well and won awards. And in policy debate, Panny Shan, grade 12; Molly Wancewicz and Anika Jain, grade 11; and Megan Huynh, Jacob Ohana and Amandeep Ahluwalia, grade 10, have won awards.
The middle school speech and debate team began its competition season in November at the San Francisco Middle School Fall Classic. Avi Gulati, Jason Pan, Vibha Arramreddy, Annie Ma, Cynthia Chen and Nash Melisso, grade 8; Krishay Mukhija, Zain Awais and Andrew Sun, grade 7; and Rishi Jain, grade 6, all received gold medals for their excellent performances. At the same event, silver medals were won by Jeremy Ding, Reiya Das and Sachin Shah, grade 8; Sidra Xu, Aditi Vinod and Akshay Manglik, grade 7; and Anshul Reddy, Arnav Jain, Aimee