This story was submitted by speech and debate department chair Jenny Achten. 

Senior Andrew Sun was named the congressional debate national champion at the online Tournament of Champions, hosted by the University of Kentucky. This tournament is difficult for students to even qualify to attend, let alone win first place! Students must place highly at regular season tournaments to be invited to attend the event.

Joining Sun in winning awards were seniors Akshay Manglik and Andy Lee, as well as juniors Anshul Reddy and Deven Shah, in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Junior William Chien and sophomore Michelle Jin placed in extemporaneous speaking. Junior Vedant Kenkare won a speaker award in public forum debate. Finally, junior Andrea Thia and sophomore Dyllan Han were in elimination rounds in original oratory. The coaches were also very proud of the other students who qualified to compete at the event, including senior Nathan Ohana, juniors Caden Lin, Arnav Jain and Rohan Rashingkar, sophomores Sara Wan, Carol Wininger, Austina Xu and Rahul Mulpuri, and freshmen Ansh Sheth, Max Xing and Iris Fu. Sun summarized his feelings about the weekend by saying, “Thanks to my amazing parents, coaches and friends (both in and out of congress) — it’s your support that makes this possible! Go Eagles!”