The speech and debate team had some outstanding success in June! The upper school team was represented by Nikhil Dharmaraj, rising sophomore, at the National Speech & Debate Association championship in Salt Lake City, Utah, June 12-17. The tournament is the most competitive national championship for individual speaking events, which are his specialty.
Dharmaraj was one of 250 students in the country to qualify in original oratory (out of thousands who tried to qualify). He made it to the quarterfinals, ranking him 28th in the nation as a ninth grader. His topic was how we need to be better about avoiding the “sunk cost” fallacy or why it is better to admit mistakes and move on than to keep pouring resources into failed strategies based on bad decisions.
During the same week, the middle school team was represented by a large group at the National Junior Forensic League Tournament, also in Salt Lake City, June 14-17. The biggest news from NJFL was that Harker won the top Overall School of Excellence Award for the fifth consecutive year!
A detailed breakdown of individual accomplishments at the NJFL is below. All grades listed are for the 2016-17 school year:
Original oratory
Avi Gulati, grade 9, 2nd place
Arusha Patil, grade 8, 6th place
Public Forum Debate
Jeremy Ding and Kenneth Liou, both grade 9, double octofinalists
Lincoln-Douglas Debate
Sachin Shah, grade 9, finalist (2nd place)
Akshay Manglik, grade 8, quarterfinalist
Aditi Vinod, grade 8, octofinalist
Policy Debate
Jai Bahri, grade 9 and Jason Lin, grade 8, semifinalists
Andy Lee, grade 8 and Deven Shah, grade 7, quarterfinalists
Dramatic Interpretation
Nikki Solanki, grade 9, 9th place
Storytelling
Avi Gulati, grade 9, 6th place
Impromptu
Avi Gulati, grade 9, 2nd place
Prose Interpretation
Nikki Solanki, grade 9, 6th place
The coaches were incredibly proud of all of our students. They represented Harker very well as strong competitors and excellent community citizens. Recent graduates Karen Qi, Zarek Drozda and Panny Shan, all Class of 2016, came along to coach the middle school students. “Harker has a reputation for being smart, well spoken and gracious whether we win or lose, and that image is a result of how our students conduct themselves at every tournament,” noted Jenny Alme, department chair of communication studies.