Notre Dame's Forensics Team is San Francisco Bound!
Four members of Notre Dame's Speech & Debate Team will be traveling to the California State Speech & Debate Finals at Lowell High School in San Francisco April 27-29th, 2012. These students represent the top competitors in the Coast Forensics League, one of the most competitive Speech & Debate leagues in the entire country, and the most competitive in California. The California State finals bring together the top 64 competitors in each event from all over the state to compete for scholarships and the title of State Champion.
On Sunday, March 11th, Prerana Vaddi and Adrienne Furniss (both class of 2012) went 4-1 in preliminaries to earn a place in the final "go" round to determine the top 6 teams from the league. Negating the resolution "The economy will be the deciding issue in the 2012 presidential election," Prerana and Adrienne were victorious in a 3-2 decision in their favor. Prerana and Adrienne become the second team in 2 years from Notre Dame to qualify in Parliamentary debate, and are the second all-female team to make it to state finals from our league (the first being ND's Nureen Khadr and Ameera Naguib, also both class of 2012, who qualified last year). Prerana, an Academic All-American with more than 1,000 NFL points, is currently Debate Captain. The pair is ranked in the top 40 teams in the country in Parliamentary debate.
On Sunday March 18th, it was the speech group's time to shine. This year, more Notre Dame team members made it to finals than any year previously. Making it to finals and becoming alternates to the state finals this year were Catherine (Kitty) Lan (class of 2013) in Foreign Extemporaneous (even though this was her first time trying this event!), Shannon Trinh (class of 2014) in Dramatic Interpretation (who was new to speech this year!), and Madhulika Krishnan (class of 2012) in Humorous Interpretation. Madhulika, the current Captain of Speech, is the first alternate to state! Qualifying for the state tournament were Prerana Vaddi in Impromptu Speaking, Varsha Sathappan in Original Advocacy and Mirai Shah in Thematic Interpretation. Mirai and Varsha both qualified for state finals last year as freshmen, where Varsha placed 13th in the state in Original Advocacy.
Congratulations to these young women who embody true Notre Dame leadership. Not only do they succeed in an academically challenging activity, but each of them works hard to ensure the success of new members of the team, and show the power of a strong voice well applied.