Bellarmine’s Speech and Debate Team had a very successful start to their season. The team virtually “travelled” to Texas and Long Beach to compete in the first two invitationals of the season.
Adarsh Hiremath ’21, Surya Midha ’21, and Eric Gottlieb ’21, were among the participants at the Greenhill Invitational. Adarsh and Surya competed in the Policy Team debate, while Eric participated in the Lincoln-Douglas debate. All three students are also participating in the regular tournament.
Adarsh and Surya both performed well by going undefeated in the prelims and making it to the finals, where they won the tournament on a 3-0 decision in the final round. In addition to that, Adarsh was ranked the 2nd best speaker at the tournament, and Surya was ranked 3rd. Eric was able to make it to the final of the round robin, and from there showed an excellent performance, which earned him an entry into the semifinal round. Overall, Eric placed in the top 4, and was also named the number one ranked speaker at the tournament.
Meanwhile, a larger group of students participated virtually in the CSU Long Beach Tournament. The junior team of Ram Gorthi ’22 and Akhil Iyengar ’22 was able to make it to the quarterfinals, which is a solid start for the team at this tournament. Overall, the team performed very well at this tournament. As always, a special thanks to our Speech and Debate coaches!
Congratulations to the following students on their hard work and their results:
Extemporaneous Speaking:
- Ashok Ramkumar ’21 – 1st place (finalist)
- Kush Narang ’22 – 2nd place (finalist)
- Tyler Pineda ’22 – 6th place (finalist)
- Oliver Owen ’23 – 7th place (finalist)
- Nihaar Charagulla ’22 – semifinalist
- Majid Shabbeer ’22 – semifinalist
- Ryan Alappatt ’22 – semifinalist
Original Oratory:
- John Xu ’22 – 3rd place (finalist)
- Arnav Dhingra ’23 – 5th place (finalist)
- Rishi Dinesh ’23 – semifinalist
- Michael Lutz ’22 – semifinalist
- Neal Dwivedula ’23 – semifinalist
- Nathan Kang ’22 – semifinalist
Program Oratorical Interpretation:
- Devansh Bansal ’22 – 5th place (finalist)
Oratorical Interpretation:
- Ryan Milligan ’22 – 3rd place (finalist)
Policy Debate:
- Akhil Iyengar ’22 and Ram Gorthi ’22 – quarterfinalists (top 8)
- Ben Manens ’22 and Nimai Talur ’22 – octofinalists (top 16)
Congressional Debate:
- Veer Juneja ’22 – 3rd place (finalist)