The speech and debate team had some outstanding success in June! The upper school team was represented by Nikhil Dharmaraj, rising sophomore, at the National Speech & Debate Association championship in Salt Lake City, Utah, June 12-17. The tournament is the most competitive national championship for individual speaking events, which are his specialty.
Dharmaraj was one of 250 students in the country to qualify in original oratory (out of thousands who tried to qualify). He made it to the quarterfinals, ranking him 28th in the nation as a ninth grader. His topic was how we need to be better about avoiding the “sunk cost” fallacy or why it is better to admit mistakes and move on than to keep pouring resources into failed strategies based on bad decisions.
During the same week, the middle school team was represented by a large group at the National Junior Forensic League Tournament, also in Salt Lake City, June 14-17. The biggest news from NJFL was that Harker won the top Overall School of Excellence Award for the fifth consecutive year!
A detailed breakdown of individual accomplishments at the NJFL is below. All grades listed are for the 2016-17 school year:
Original oratory
Avi Gulati, grade 9, 2nd place
Arusha Patil, grade 8, 6th place
Public Forum Debate
Jeremy Ding and Kenneth Liou, both grade 9, double octofinalists
Lincoln-Douglas Debate
Sachin Shah, grade 9, finalist (2nd place)
Akshay Manglik, grade 8, quarterfinalist
Aditi Vinod, grade 8, octofinalist
Policy Debate
Jai Bahri, grade 9 and Jason Lin, grade 8, semifinalists
Andy Lee, grade 8 and Deven Shah, grade 7, quarterfinalists
Dramatic Interpretation
Nikki Solanki, grade 9, 9th place
Storytelling
Avi Gulati, grade 9, 6th place
Impromptu
Avi Gulati, grade 9, 2nd place
Prose Interpretation
Nikki Solanki, grade 9, 6th place
The coaches were incredibly proud of all of our students. They represented Harker very well as strong competitors and excellent community citizens. Recent graduates Karen Qi, Zarek Drozda and Panny Shan, all Class of 2016, came along to coach the middle school students. “Harker has a reputation for being smart, well spoken and gracious whether we win or lose, and that image is a result of how our students conduct themselves at every tournament,” noted Jenny Alme, department chair of communication studies.
Harker middle and upper school debate students had outstanding success at the Western JV and Novice National Championship, held March 12-13 at San Francisco State University.
Cindy Wang and Clarissa Wang, both grade 9 were the tournament champions in second year public forum. Kelly Shen, grade 9, was the tournament champion in novice Lincoln-Douglas debate.
In addition, Esha Deokar, grade 9, and Deven Shah, grade 6, were in the semifinals of novice policy and Meghna Phalke and Alycia Cary, both grade 9, reached the octofinals of novice policy. Anusha Kuppahally, grade 9, and Jacob Ohana, grade 10, were in octos of second year policy.
Raymond Banke, grade 9, Floyd Gordon, grade 10, and Aimee Wang and Alina Yuan, both grade 6, were double octofinalists in novice public forum. Sascha Pakravan and Anshul Reddy, both grade 6, were in the quarters of novice public forum. In second year public forum, Betsy Tian, grade 7, and Shomrik Mondal, grade 8, were in octos. In second year Lincoln-Douglas, Akshay Manglik, grade 7, Cat Zhao, grade 8, Avi Gulati, grade 8 and Satvik Narashimhan, grade 9 were octofinalists.
Also in second year Lincoln-Douglas, Neha Tallapragada, grade 9, and Annie Ma, grade 8, were in quarters. In novice Lincoln-Douglas, Karoun Kaushik, grade 6, and Aditya Tadimeti, grade 7, were double octofinalists. Rishi Jain, grade 6, was in quarters of novice Lincoln-Douglas. Juniors Molly Wancewicz, Emmie Malyugina and Rahul Shukla and seniors Zarek Drozda and Karen Qi spent the weekend judging and coaching. Their help proved invaluable.
Harker won first place at the 2016 Cal High School Speech and Debate Tournament, held this past weekend at UC Berkeley. The team won the Sweepstakes trophy, which measures the overall success of a team across all events, including speech, policy debate, Lincoln-Douglas debate, congressional debate and public forum debate. Harker teams prevailed over 243 schools from 26 states and four countries. Harker upper and middle school students participated.
“This award demonstrates the incredible breadth of our speech and debate program,” said Jenny Alme, speech and debate chair. “It took success on all fronts to win this prestigious award. From sixth through 12th grade, we had students excelling in all of the events.”
Over 100 Harker students participated in the 43rd annual invitational tournament.
“This is one of the largest tournaments in the nation,” said Karina Momary, director of middle school speech and debate. “It is also one of the most challenging tournaments our middle school students will attend all year. We had numerous students accomplish top finishes individually, however, the most impressive award is the first place in overall in speech and debate. This award is given to the top school at the entire tournament. This is a huge accomplishment for all of our students as is this is the first time Harker has won this award.”
Massive congratulations to all the participants and to their coaches! Go debate Eagles!
Karina Momary, middle school debate coach, had a nice surprise in her snail mail box one morning in mid-September: a letter from the White House! She received a missive from President Barack Obama acknowledging the middle school debate team’s success this past year. In addition to the letter, the envelope also contained photos of the First Family. This acknowledgement came after the middle school debate team was named an Overall School of Excellence by the National Speech & Debate Association, an award given to just three schools nationwide. This is the fourth time in a row the MS team has received this award! Read more about both upper and middle school debate triumphs this summer at Harker News! https://staging.news.harker.org/?p=26731
It’s been a fabulous past few months for Harker’s speech and debate teams! Although the bulk of the speech and debate tournament season runs from September through March, many students qualify for end-of-year national championship tournaments in May and June. Both the middle and upper school teams were very successful at these tournaments.
Top School Honors
In May, the upper school team was recognized by the Tournament of Champions (TOC) as a School of Excellence. This award, sponsored by the National Speech & Debate Association, is given to the team with the most success in all TOC events. The TOC is one of the most challenging tournaments upper school students compete in, so this was one of the biggest accomplishments of the entire season. Harker reached this remarkable achievement by advancing to elimination rounds in all four debate events: Lincoln-Doulas, policy, public forum and congressional. Most schools are thrilled to have students advance in a single event; Harker was the only school to have students advance in more than two. Coaches Greg Achten, Carol Green and Jenny Alme shared in celebrating this special award.
Similarly, in June, the middle school team set a record by winning the Overall School of Excellence Award for the fourth time! The award, given by the National Speech & Debate Association, is presented to the top three teams in the country. It is the highest honor a middle school program can achieve. Karina Momary, middle school coach, said she is incredibly proud of all of her competitors.
These awards reflect the hard work and success of individual Harker students and also the overall strength of the program.
Outstanding Individual Achievements and Service
Many students also experienced great success in individual events. At the National Speech & Debate Association National Tournament in Dallas in June, Madhu Nori ’15 reached the quarterfinals in original oratory, finishing among the top 28 orators in the nation. At the same tournament, Nikhil Kishore ’15 and David Lin ’15 finished in the top 30 teams in the nation in public forum debate.
At the middle school Speech & Debate Association National Tournament, also in Dallas, many Harker students earned top honors and awards. In declamation, Nikki Solanki, now grade 8, and Arusha Patil, now grade 7, were both quarterfinalists. In dramatic interpretation, Riya Gupta, now grade 9, was a quarterfinalist, and Solanki placed sixth in the nation. In impromptu speaking, Nikhil Dharmaraj, now grade 9, finished fourth in the nation. In original oratory, Gupta, Dharmaraj and Avi Gulati, now grade 8, were all semifinalists. In storytelling, Dharmaraj finished third.
The strong showing by the speech team members was matched by the excellent results from the debaters. In policy debate, Jai Bahri, now grade 8, and Julia Biswas, now grade 7, were double octafinalists, as were Andy Lee and Jason Lin, both grade 7. Maddie Huynh, now grade 8, and Anusha Kuppahally, now grade 9, were semifinalists. In Lincoln-Douglas debate Annie Ma, now grade 8, was a double octafinalist. In public forum, Cindy Wang, now grade 9, and Clarissa Wang, now grade 9, were quarterfinalists. In Congressional Debate, Jason Huang, now grade 9, was a finalist.
These strong efforts were significantly aided by the coaching assistance of recent Harker alumni and current upper school students. Ayush Midha ’15, Pranav Sharma ’15 and Zarek Drozda, now grade 12 gave up two weeks of their summer to help the middle school team prepare for the tournament. They assisted students during a weeklong work session then traveled to Dallas with the team to help coach the students during the event. Nitya Mani ’15 also helped out during the work week.
Momary and speech coach Marjorie Hazeltine worked tirelessly to prepare the students for competition, supervise the students and assistant coaches, and coordinate this highly successful trip.
Ongoing study
After the conclusion of the season, rather than taking a break from speech and debate, many of our middle and upper school students spent the summer preparing for the coming season at speech and debate camps across the nation. Students attended camps, ranging from one to seven weeks, at Georgetown University, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan, to name just a few. Also many Harker students attended the summer speech and debate camp hosted by Harker.
During summer debate camps, students study the theory and practice of debate, learning from instructors from prestigious college and high school debate programs around the nation. In addition to valuable speech and debate experience, students also get to experience college first hand, often living in dormitories, studying in college classrooms and getting a taste of what college life is like.
“Debate camp is one of the most intellectually enriching experiences a student can undertake,” said Alme, Harker debate chair. “I have seen thousands of students grow as debaters, researchers, independent thinkers and responsible global citizens. Because the nature of debate camp allows for students to immerse themselves in the study and practice of competition, there really is no substitute for attending camp.”
Though the camp schedule is rigorous, often involving long days and weekend work, the students are also able to learn more about the college campuses they visit and occasionally have great cultural experiences. For instance, several Harker students at the Georgetown Debate Institute were taken by camp faculty to the U.S. Supreme Court for the announcement of the historic gay marriage decision Obergefell vs. Hodges. The students were at the court for the reading of the decision and got to go inside the chambers. Debate camp allowed these students to be there for a truly historical event and it is an experience those students will likely never forget.
New Faces
At the end of the 2014-15 school year, Carol Green stepped down as communication studies department chair to take a position teaching history at Harker. Alme was named department chair and Sandra Berkowitz was brought in to coach the public forum and congressional debate team. Berkowitz has extensive experience coaching debate at the high school level and also has taught at the collegiate level at the University of Maine and most recently at Minnesota State Community and Technical College. With her wealth of teaching and coaching experience, along with the return of Alme, Momary and Achten, the team is in great hands and looks forward to another successful season.
Reddy’s winning debate was on the topic of minimum wage and whether it should be substantially increased. The senior successfully affirmed the proposal.
Reddy won two national titles in April – the NDCA National Championships and the Tournament of Champions.
“His achievements are truly historic,” said Greg Achten, Harker’s Lincoln-Douglas team coach. “Winning one national championship tournament takes hard work, incredible intellectual range and exceptional speaking skills. To win three national titles over the course of two years is simply an unheard of accomplishment. In the history of Lincoln-Douglas debate, no student from any school has ever achieved this level of success.”
Reddy entered the 2014-15 debate season as the No. 1-ranked Lincoln-Douglas debater in the nation. He lived up to that ranking with a pair of winning premier national championship tournaments.
This recent success follows a successful 2013-14 season in which Reddy became the first Harker Lincoln-Douglas debater to win the prestigious NDCA National Championships. Reddy built on this success his senior year, being named the top speaker at five of the first six tournaments he attended and winning the Glenbrooks tournament in November, the largest tournament of the fall semester.
Along with these, Reddy also won the Harvard Westlake tournament in January and entered the championship season as the only student to win two majors in the regular season. He is the first student ever to win this tournament twice. Reddy is also only the second student in the history of Lincoln-Douglas debate to win the NDCA National Championships and the Tournament of Champions in the same year.
Joining him in his debating success, the Harker speech and debate team also had an amazing showing at the Tournament of Champions. The event, hosted by the University of Kentucky April 24-27, is one of the premier national championships and included students from more than 200 different schools and 30 states.
Harker was awarded the first-place sweepstakes award after successfully finishing all four of the debate divisions and the individual events category, making the Harker team the most successful overall squad to attend the tournament.
The policy debate duo of Panny Shan, grade 11, and Ayush Midha, grade 12, made it to the octofinal debate round. Public forum debaters Nikhil Kishore, grade 12, Vamsi Gadiraju, grade 12, Abhinav Ketineni, grade 11, and Jasmine Liu, grade 11, were in double octofinals and the team of Alexander Lam, grade 10, and David Jin, grade 11, were in the octofinals. Aditya Dhar, grade 10, made it to the semifinals of congressional debate and Arjun Narayan, grade 11, was a quarterfinalist in extemporaneous speaking. Reddy, Midha and Lam also were recognized with outstanding individual speaker awards.
In the 44-year history of the event, no other school has ever had students reach elimination rounds in more than three of the events. Harker had students excel in all five.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
For nearly a decade, Harker’s speech and debate program has given students the invaluable skills they need to present and persuade. In the past five years, Harker students have won multiple national championships in nearly every speech and debate event they have entered. The department’s profile has continued to grow as more people realize the critical importance of clear, persuasive communication.
Before department chair Carol Green joined Harker in 2006, the speech and debate program consisted of only a few dozen students at the upper school. “Now I myself teach about 70,” Green said. She attributes the heavy growth over the past several years in part to the program’s expansion into more types of events.
“When I first got here, the only two events we did were policy debate – which is a very technical two-person debate – and Lincoln-Douglas debate, which is a very technical one-person debate,” Green recalled.
These events have students debating a single topic year-round, requiring intensive research. They are judged by experts in the chosen topic who are keenly aware of how nuances of speech can affect how a message is received.
The judges’ expertise in the chosen topics means students must demonstrate considerable knowledge of the subject area when arguing their sides.
In her second year at Harker, Green added public forum debate to the program. In contrast to the more research-heavy debate events, public forum changes topics every month, and is evaluated by citizen judges.
“Citizen judges are anyone off the street – lawyers, doctors, moms, dads. People you’re going to have to persuade in everyday life,” Green explained. “So you’re looking at a different type of persuasion, because they don’t know necessarily the most technical jargon, but you’re still looking at the human elements of persuasion.”
In addition to public forum, the department added individual speech events and congressional debate, which fit better with the schedules of most Harker students. “So if a child takes a month off to go do robotics, they don’t lose out on a competitive edge because they just skip,” Green said. “And so when we introduced these other activities that still taught oral communication skills, taught research skills, but maybe weren’t as intense, we had a greater retention level.”
Once more students began entering these events, “the students became successful and success breeds success,” Green explained. The program’s growing profile and the reputation it developed for building strong communication and presentation skills attracted more students to the program.
Senior Nikhil Kishore, who in the fall semester earned a trip to the National Speech & Debate Association’s Tournament of Champions, found that he enjoyed debate because it gave him more control over how far he progressed in comparison to other competitive events, such as sports.
“It’s a lot more student driven,” he said. “If you actually do more work yourself, that’s a lot. It really dictates how well you do, how much research you’ve done, how much prep you’ve done.”
He has also found the environment highly collaborative, which has been key to his success. “It’s really good because you can bounce ideas off of [peers] and you’re working with some of the smartest people, which helps you create all these good ideas and things that you can work with in a debate.”
“If you get eliminated [from a tournament], you immediately turn around and become a member of the coaching staff and continue to help until Harker is eliminated as a whole,” Green said. “Because even though you’re an individual competitor, you’re still part of a team.”
In summer 2010, Harker’s middle school debate squad traveled to the National Junior Forensic League’s national championship, where it took both first and second place in public forum. The addition of Karina Momary to the faculty later that year bolstered the middle school debate program. Momary quickly sought to expand the middle school program by adding more events.
Having come from a larger debate program in her previous job, Momary wanted to enhance the middle school program by offering more than public forum, which focuses on current events. “Not everyone likes talking about current events. Some people want to talk about moral values and some people want to talk about policy issues,” she said.
Since then, the middle school program has won at the national level in every debate event it has entered. “A lot of parents ask me which style of debate are we better at, and we are just as good at all of them,” Momary said. “Part of the reason is we encourage students to find their passion and to research something that interests them, and with that comes the passion to excel.”
When she joined Harker, there was a scarcity of local middle school debate competitions, which made preparation for national tournaments a challenge. Momary took the bold step to start entering her students into high school-level tournaments, which drew criticism from some in the debate community. “And then our kids started beating the high school kids,” Momary said. “And now all the middle school programs out here do the same thing.”
Green attributes much of Harker debate’s success to the resources available to students. “Honestly, I think the Harker community’s a large part,” she said. In a recent example, upper school debate teacher Greg Achten’s students were to debate on environmental issues, which prompted Achten to invite science teacher Kate Schafer to speak with his students on the topic. “Being able to draw from the rest of the Harker resources and the Harker community really allows our students to take it outside of the text,” Green said.
Green added that students also learn how to argue from both sides of the debate, “forcing students to question their own beliefs, to understand and build stronger foundations in their beliefs, because they know what the opposition’s going to say and they know how build a response to that.”
Middle school students also get help from upper school debaters, who offer support and guidance at after-school practice sessions and workshops. Momary noted that middle school team captains are in near-constant contact with upper school captains to coordinate and prepare arguments. When middle and upper school students travel to tournaments together, they are set up as buddies. “Everyone supports each other and really works as a team,” she said.
“Harker debate is really like a huge family,” said Cindy Wang, grade 8. “The shared love of debate connects all of us and we help each other in difficult or stressful situations. Being on the team is an amazing experience; the support I have received from the parents, coaches and peers has really helped me work hard toward improving.”
A large part of debate’s popularity with Harker students can be attributed to the skills its students develop, which can be applied to many disciplines, including academics or future careers. “They’re learning how to construct an argument, which is really helpful when they’re doing things like writing persuasive essays or writing research papers and things like that, for social sciences and for STEM,” said Green.
“There’s nothing that would prepare them for the boardroom better than being able to stand up and deliver their ideas,” said Momary. “A few of the parents have come back and told me they watched their students talk to VCs in a boardroom and couldn’t believe that they had the ability to do that.”
Debate also gives students the opportunity to perform extensive research on a wide variety of topics. While researching a debate topic, students may immerse themselves in global economics, environmental sciences, current events or even the nature of debate tournaments themselves.
“We focus a lot on current events. So it encourages you to keep up with the world and see what’s going on, which is pretty interesting because often you learn a lot of things that you wouldn’t have otherwise known,” Kishore said.
As students frequently travel to tournaments, time management also becomes an important tool of the trade, which Wang found especially important. “I’ve learned to do my homework faster and more efficiently so I can leave time for debate, and I can apply this skill everywhere to do as much as possible in a given timeframe.”
Harker rocked the Southwest Championship tournament at Arizona State this weekend!
Lisa Liu, grade 11, took second overall in humorous interpretation and third overall in impromptu speaking. Misha Tseitlin, grade 10, breezed through semifinals to end his Congressional Debate run in finals. Arjun Narayan, grade 11, welcomed in 2015 by earning a spot in the semifinals of extemporaneous speaking.
In public forum debate, all 10 teams were 3-2 or better going into round six and eight teams advanced to elimination rounds. Sorjo Banerjee, grade 11, and Emaad Raghib, grade 10, were in the final round where they ended up in second place out of 124 public forum teams. Nikhil Kishore and Vamsi Gadiraju, both grade 12, advanced to the Elite Eight where they met Banerjee and Raghib, ending their run as quarterfinalists. David Jin, grade 11, and Alexander Lam, grade 10, were also quarterfinalists. Both Kishore/Gadiraju and Jin/Lam complete their qualifications to the Tournament of Champions.
Ending their run in the Sweet Sixteen were Jasmine Liu and Abhinav Ketineni, both grade 11, who met Jin and Lam in the octofinal round, also know as “the bid round.” Also earning bids to the Tournament of Champions were Samali Sahoo and Anthony Luo, both grade 11, as well as Aumesh Misra, grade 11, and Ashwath Thirumalai, grade 12, who advanced to double-octofinals but met Harker teams in the round of 32 and were thus awarded ghost bids. Avik Wadhwa and Aadyot Bhatnagar, both grade 12, as well as seniors Andrew Jin and David Lin also advanced through triples to end their run in double-octofinals.
Special recognition goes out to alumni coaches Kiran Arimilli ’13, Anuj Sharma ’13 and Andy Wang ’14 for their coaching in Arizona.
Congratulations to all 23 Harker speech and debate Eagles for rocking The Grand Canyon State!
By Zach Jones, with additional information provided by debate teachers Carol Green, Jenny Alme and Karina Momary
Students Earn Accolades and TOC Spots at Presentation High
More than 30 Harker students attended the Presentation High School Public Forum Invitational held the weekend of Nov. 8. Eighteen upper school students competed in the varsity division while four upper school and eight middle school students competed in the novice division; three seniors came to the tournament to coach novices.
Two of Harker’s varsity teams made it into the Elite Eight, with one team debating its way to the final two, losing the final round on a 2-1 decision. Seniors Nikhil Kishore and Vamsi Gadiraju rocked their first tournament of the season as final-round participants and earned their first leg to the Tournament of Champions.
Kishore and Gadiraju are the fifth Harker public forum team to earn half of their qualifying legs only two months into the season.
The top eight teams in elimination rounds included the duo known as “The Brothers Lin” – David Lin, grade 12, and his younger brother Jimmy Lin, grade 9.
Sorjo Banerjee, grade 11, was named as the top overall individual speaker at the tournament with five other Harker students being recognized in the top 15 overall.
Success in Minneapolis
Six middle school and 10 upper school students traveled to Apple Valley, Minn., in early November to compete at the MinneApple Debate Tournament. This is the first year Harker middle school students have competed at this high school varsity national invitational and everyone had a wonderful time!
Every team from Harker won at least one of their preliminary rounds, an especially notable accomplishment for the middle schoolers as they were the only grade 7 debaters in the pool of mostly high school juniors and seniors.
Junior Eesha Chona and Joyce Huang, grade 10, were 33rd seed and missed elimination rounds by the speaker point tie-breaker. Juniors Suraj Jagadeesh and Nikhil Bopardikar went undefeated in preliminaries and lost a close match in the first elimination round. Bopardikar was also named seventh overall individual speaker out of more than 200 speakers in the varsity division!
Abhinav Ketineni and Jasmine Liu, both grade 11, also went undefeated in prelims. They lost in the Sweet 16 as did the team of Alexander Lam, grade 10, and David Jin, grade 11. Both teams earned their first of two qualifying legs to the Tournament of Champions. Ketineni was also the ninth overall individual speaker.
Sorjo Banerjee and sophomore Emaad Raghib represented Harker all the way to the Elite Eight, losing in the quarterfinal round. They also picked up their first leg to the Tournament of Champions.
Middle School Holds Intramural Speech and Debate Tournament
On Oct. 30, 85 middle school students and their parents participated in the October Intramural Speech and Debate Tournament. Each student competed in three competitive rounds against other Harker students to practice and get a feel for what a competitive round is like. Parents and high school students volunteered as judges. The event was run in a timely fashion, with more than 50 total speech and debate rounds taking place on a Thursday evening.
On Monday, Eesha Chona, grade 11, was selected to be a part of the National Speech & Debate Association’s Student Leadership Committee, which represents the needs of debate students and encourages student leaders to advocate for other association members. As a member of the committee, Chona will serve as a role model to other debate students, participate in monthly meetings and engage with social media outlets. “This is an incredible honor and responsibility for a student, especially a junior, as these students represent their peers within the national organization,” said upper school debate teacher Carol Green. Chona is the second Harker student to be named to the committee; the first was Maneesha Panja ’13.
Additionally, the upper school’s speech and debate program was recognized for its extraordinary success by being named to the National Speech & Debate Association’s Pentagon Society, thereby making it one of the top 0.1 percent high school speech and debate programs in the country. Harker earned this honor by receiving more than 500 honorary degrees during the 2013-14 school year. “Honorary degrees are earned through competitive and service related activities,” Green said. “It is not necessarily the number of students who participate but also how successful they are in their efforts.” Harker ranked 15th overall out of 3,000 nationwide member schools.