Many thanks to Karina Momary and Sue Prutton, who both contributed to this story.

Over the weekend of Jan. 26, 25 middle school forensics students traveled to Sacramento to compete at the National Catholic Forensics League National Tournament Qualifier. While the NCFL National Tournament is traditionally for high school students, Harker’s middle school students were still able to compete at the qualifier tournament with the understanding that they would not qualify to the tournament.

“Had our students been in high school we would have had two students qualify automatically given their records and three compete in an additional round to determine if they could qualify,” said middle school debate teacher Karina Momary. “This is an amazing accomplishment and shows the significant growth of our program in the past year as we did not have this same success at the tournament last year.”

On Jan. 11-12 the middle school forensics team traveled to Phoenix, Ariz., to compete at the Arizona State University Southwest Championship. Aditya Dhar and Alexander Lam, both grade 8, participated in Congressional Debate as the only middle school students among the 109 entrants. Lam finished in the top four in his group of 12, while Dhar finished in the top two and advanced to the Congress Finals where he received 11th place. The duo also competed in Public Forum debate together and were the only middle school team to advance to the top 32.

At a debate tournament held at College Preparatory School in Oakland on Dec 21-22, Raymond Xu, grade 11, advanced to the double octofinal round, finishing in the top 32 out of 104 students. Karan Das-Grande, grade 12, and Srikar Pyda, grade 11, made it to the quarterfinals, finishing in the top eight.