By Carol Green, upper school debate teacher

Harker rocked the Southwest Championship tournament at Arizona State this weekend! 

Lisa Liu, grade 11, took second overall in humorous interpretation and third overall in impromptu speaking. Misha Tseitlin, grade 10, breezed through semifinals to end his Congressional Debate run in finals. Arjun Narayan, grade 11, welcomed in 2015 by earning a spot in the semifinals of extemporaneous speaking.

In public forum debate, all 10 teams were 3-2 or better going into round six and eight teams advanced to elimination rounds. Sorjo Banerjee, grade 11, and Emaad Raghib, grade 10, were in the final round where they ended up in second place out of 124 public forum teams. Nikhil Kishore and Vamsi Gadiraju, both grade 12, advanced to the Elite Eight where they met Banerjee and Raghib, ending their run as quarterfinalists. David Jin, grade 11, and Alexander Lam, grade 10, were also quarterfinalists. Both Kishore/Gadiraju and Jin/Lam complete their qualifications to the Tournament of Champions.

Ending their run in the Sweet Sixteen were Jasmine Liu and Abhinav Ketineni, both grade 11, who met Jin and Lam in the octofinal round, also know as “the bid round.” Also earning bids to the Tournament of Champions were Samali Sahoo and Anthony Luo, both grade 11, as well as Aumesh Misra, grade 11, and Ashwath Thirumalai, grade 12, who advanced to double-octofinals but met Harker teams in the round of 32 and were thus awarded ghost bids. Avik Wadhwa and Aadyot Bhatnagar, both grade 12, as well as seniors Andrew Jin and David Lin also advanced through triples to end their run in double-octofinals.

Special recognition goes out to alumni coaches Kiran Arimilli ’13, Anuj Sharma ’13 and Andy Wang ’14 for their coaching in Arizona.

Congratulations to all 23 Harker speech and debate Eagles for rocking The Grand Canyon State!