The Bridgewater-Raritan High School Forensics Speech and Debate competed at the Montville Invitational competition at Montville Township High School on February 21.
Over 50 Bridgewater-Raritan students attended the competition, competing across a diversity of speech and debate categories against hundreds of local competitors.
The speech and debate team arrived at Montville Township High School a quarter to 8 a.m., where congressional debate and speech competitors were dropped off. The remaining debate competitors were driven to Robert R. Lazar Middle School, where Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum categories were taking place.
Competition rounds began at approximately 9 a.m., the first of four preliminary rounds. Each debate round lasted for about an hour, with the first two rounds being randomly paired and the final two rounds being paired based on standings.
Finals were scheduled to take place, but due to scheduling issues, the tournament ended all rounds after the preliminary set was completed. The fourth and final preliminary round for most events ended in the late afternoon.
An awards ceremony recognizing all the top competitors in each speech and debate category took place in the Montville Township High School gymnasium at around 5:30 p.m. Student competitors from the middle school took a short bus ride to the high school to attend.
In the speech event, two Bridgewater-Raritan competitors received awards for their performances. Suphachikaa Chinnasamy placed sixth in Declamation, while Achyut Nuli, speech captain, championed the Original Oratory category.
In terms of debate, Bridgewater-Raritan had many impressive performances. In Novice Lincoln-Douglas, Kartik Khurana placed 1st, ranked as the best in the pool. In Junior Varsity (JV) Lincoln-Douglas debate, Arshiya Aggarwal placed 6th while Advik Narasimhan placed 5th. Finally, in the Varsity Lincoln-Douglas debate, Dhruv Rakhade placed 6th while Mythili Madhusoodanan placed 3rd.
In Pthe ublic Forum (PF) debate, one of the team’s most populous categories, the success continued. In JV PF, Aria Mahajan and Avik Dutta placed third. In Varsity PF, Rishi Khanna and Viraaj Marathe (team president) placed fifth, with Anton Fomin and Ishaan Shetty placing third.
Lastly, the most successful event for Bridgewater-Raritan was the Parliamentary debate. In the Novice Parliamentary debate, Avyai Bongu and Joshua Shobin placed 4th. In the Varsity Parliamentary debate, all Bridgewater-Raritan teams entered in the pool placed in the top 6. Manas Gumedelli, parliamentary debate captain, and Mohnish Gumedelli placed sixth; Hrishi Patel (team vice president) and Jasmeet Singh placed third; Dhitika Madduri and Laasya Pothuru placed second; and Ohmal Suresh and Paritosh Bhole (team vice president) finished first, championing the category.
The team looks forward to the remaining events on their competition schedule. This weekend, a home tournament held at Bridgewater-Raritan’s very own campus will take place with a district competition for Congressional debate. Afterwards, in March, the team will close out their season with district and state tournaments hosted at Delbarton High School and Hunterdon Central High School, respectively.
