The Bridgewater-Raritan High School Forensics, or speech and debate, team attended the Randolph Fall Classic Forensics Tournament on November 18 at Randolph High School.
Here are the BRHS students who placed in their respective categories:
Sophomores Jadon Kim and Colin Hawley placed 4th and 3rd, respectively, for Novice Congress.
Senior Roshan Dave placed 2nd for Varsity Congress.
Freshman Achyut Nuli placed 2nd for Novice Declamation.
Seniors Meera Gharat and Andrei Cojocariu placed for Varsity Parliamentary.
Freshman Harshit Kondle placed 3rd for Novice Lincoln-Douglas.
Sophomore Eleanor Zhou placed 5th for Junior Varsity Lincoln-Douglas.
Junior Riya Shenvi placed 5th for Varsity Lincoln-Douglas.
Sophomores Neel Tandon and Hrishi Patel placed 3rd in the Novice Public Forum.
Sophomores Viraaj Marathe and Paritosh Bhole placed 6th in the Junior Varsity Public Forum.
Juniors Sunny Chen and Athul Anand placed 5th in the Junior Varsity Public Forum.
Juniors Advik Joshi and Mayur Kashyap placed 4th in the Junior Varsity Public Forum.
Seniors Maisam Tejani and Advay Pandit placed 1st in the Varsity Public Forum.
In total, there were 63 students across 47 entries. The two largest categories were Lincoln-Douglas (1 vs. 1 debate) and Public Forum (2 vs. 2 debate).
Meera Gharat, a senior who normally does Public Forum, but won first place in Parliamentary at Randolph, weighed in on the experience.
Gharat said that she was, “really proud of our team, especially the novices. Everyone really pulled through in terms of prepping and showing up with their best mindset…as for Parli, it was exciting to try a new category. I wasn’t expecting much and was there for the fun…I’m definitely going to explore it more as a category in the future.”
Maisam Tejani, the Public Forum captain and first-place winner at Randolph also had some thoughts to share.
“Starting off with my win, it was really a surreal experience. You always go into every tournament expecting and hoping for the best, but it’s not very often that you get to walk out with the first-place trophy. In the end, it boils down to having a productive community around you who are always looking to uplift everyone around them, and of course, a great partner,” he said.
He also shared his thoughts on the team as a whole.
“In regards to the team performance, this was definitely one of the most successful tournaments I’ve seen for BRHS [Public Forum] Debate. Even across all events, this was definitely a really successful tournament. Personally, I am really proud to see the huge progress we’ve made in such a short amount of time, and just hope that we can stay on that trend and make it count by the end of the year. I’m just glad that BRHS this year has even more dedicated and brilliant minds that are working together as a team should,” Tejani said.
Other prominent schools that were present at the tournament include Summit, Ridge and Hunterdon Central. This tournament was the second official tournament of the year, the first being at Phillipsburg.
The club participated in the Ridge Debates, which are a national event that took place on December 8 and 9.
