Fifty-six students from Bridgewater-Raritan High School attended the very first Speech & Debate tournament of the season on October 28.
The event was held at the Phillipsburg High School, where several schools across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut competed, exhibiting many of its talented high school debaters.
The BRHS Speech & Debate Club is a competitive academic club that fosters high schoolers’ public speaking, communication, critical thinking and leadership skills. Students in the club have the option to participate in speech events, political emulator events or debating events in tournaments.
Out of the 56 participants who attended, six superstars were successful in ranking in the top six of their categories in speech or debate events. Bridgewater-Raritan freshman Achyut Nuli finished in third place and sophomore Shravani Raj ended in sixth place in Novice Declamation.
Declamation is a speech event for 9th and 10th-grade students in which they find a past public speech of 10 minutes and edit, memorize and perform it in front of a group of three to five competitors in a classroom four to five times throughout the day. Both were competing at their first tournaments ever.
Bridgewater-Raritan senior Roshan Dave came in third place and junior Veda Viswanath finished in 12th place in the Varsity Congressional Debate. Congressional Debate is a political emulation where 12-22 high school debaters roleplay as senators and representatives each sharing their stances on American bills and policies.
BRHS sophomore Dhitika Madduri ended in third place and freshman Advika Praksh placed fourth in the Novice LD Debate. The two Novice debaters were also competing at their first tournaments ever and did not anticipate such successful results.
Finally, BRHS junior Suraj Shah finished in fourth place in Junior Varsity LD Debate. LD, formally known as Lincoln-Douglas, is a debate event in which high schoolers have a one-on-one debate, affirmative or negative, on a global topic. The LD topic for September-October 2023 was whether the United States ought to guarantee the right to housing.
This tournament served as an excellent opportunity for new and returning debaters to get a feel of a real debate tournament.
BRHS sophomore Luvyakrish Manche was one of the many students attending his first tournament.
“I obviously got the butterflies, but overall the tourney was fun… I met up with people from different schools, [and] watching final [Novice & Varsity] rounds was fun,” he said.
Though this tournament was very competitive, many participants enjoyed the experience and are motivated to continue the club and compete at the eight to nine more tournaments this season. Bridgewater-Raritan will attend its next tournament at Randolph High School on November 18.
