The Bridgewater-Raritan High School Forensics, or Speech & Debate, team served as the host to the Bridgewater-Raritan Invitational Forensics tournament on campus on February 21.
With over 800 people involved in the event, including participants, judges and volunteers, this was the first home tournament in six years, making it an exciting day for everyone.
The tournament was a standard local tournament for most of the debate categories (Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum and Parliamentary Debate) as well as for the speech categories such as Original Oratory and Extemporaneous Speaking.
However, for Congressional debate, this was a district tournament to determine who would be going to the national tournament, making the stakes even higher. Bridgewater-Raritan High School junior Anshita Jaiswal broke first, qualifying for nationals. Sophomore Jadon Kim also qualified as an alternate.
“I’m glad I participated in the Congress districts and broke. It was super cool competing on my own campus,” Kim said.
Members of Bridgewater-Raritan’s Forensics team who were not competing in Congress helped out by volunteering their time. Students did all sorts of tasks such as guiding visitors, running tab (the organizing body of the tournament), handling food, setting up buildings and even producing a video to be shown at the awards ceremony at the end of the day.
Sophomore Unknown Pranav attended the tournament and helped out as a volunteer.
“Helping out was fun. I was running around all day doing jobs,” he commented.
Junior Paritosh Bhole also spoke on his experience.
“I was mainly helping out by selling concessions, checking to make sure every room had a judge, and resetting rooms after a round was over,” he said.
Freshman Tharun Naguleswaran was involved in filming a special tournament recap video for the awards ceremony.
“Volunteering for the video at the tournament was a very transformative experience. It was extremely fun talking to other people and interviewing them made me feel very, very proud of what of everyone has accomplished,” he said.
The tournament coordinators especially cherished the experience. Senior Atharva Makode, Forensics vice president and Public Forum captain, addressed the event’s energy.
“This was a great experience for all of us as we hosted the tournament for the first time in many years. Seeing everyone’s excitement at the pretournament meetings convinced me that this was going to be a great event,” Makode said.
Senior Suraj Shah, Lincoln-Douglas captain, someone who helped out at various locations on campus for the tournament, talked about how this event was a culmination of everything the club has achieved so far this year.
“The BRHS Invitational debate tournament was months in the making, and is a testament to the commitment of our speech and debate team members. Our club officers working with our wonderful advisors, the school administration and parents were able to organize this tournament for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Hours of coordination, food preparation and design work all culminated to create an outcome that exceeded our expectations.”
The club is looking forward to holding another tournament next year. Before that, the team will be competing at the state tournament on March 14-15 and districts on 21-22.
