Middle School Debate Tournament at NDSJ!
On December 8, several girls from various middle schools 
came together at Notre Dame to participate in the Middle
School Debate Tournament! This debate helped many
students learn about the speech and debate process as
well as the skills and characteristics needed in order to
become a good competitor. Following presentations by
our Notre Dame Students, the 7th and 8th graders
competed in an interesting topic about things such as
Barbie and reality TV shows!
Forensics Goes to Santa Clara Demsey-Cronin Invitational!
This weekend was the Santa Clara Demsey-Cronin Invitational,
which is a large local invitational tournament with more
than 1,300 students who competed over the weekend from 3
states.Competing in Speech and Debate, the Notre Dame
Forensics team brought an astounding victory with several
advancements as well as new set records. Congratulations
to these girls for all their hard work!
ND Forensics Goes to Milpitas High School!
This weekend in forensics, there was a Milpitas speech 
tournament on Saturday and super debate tournament
on Sunday. There were more students competing than
we’ve ever had! Working hard, these girls
achieved numerous placings as well as advancements
to proceeding rounds.Congratulations to them for all
their hard work!
ND Forensics Has Full Summer!
New Students and Parents, mark your calendars for the New Forensics Student and Parent Meeting in the Library from 5:30-7:00pm on August 16th!
This summer the Notre Dame Speech and Debate team excelled and brought more prominence and National Recognition to the Notre Dame Community. Click on the link to read about our exciting summer!
Bringing It Home For 2011-12!
As school days dwindle down to the start of summer vacation, ND Forensics Team finishes strong to close off the school year of 2011-2012. On April 21 at the Novice Invite, Meredith Duflock ('15) placed first in Impromtu and second in Extemporaneous, Michelle Pashby ('15) placed fourth in Extemporaneous, Jennifer Kim ('15) placed fourth in Impromptu, and Shruthi Basireddy ('15) scored 3-1 in CD Debate. We are also proud to mention those who Qualified for State! Prerana Vaddi ('12) in Impromptu, Varsha Sathappan ('14) in Original Advocacy, and Mirai Shah ('14) in Thematic Interpretation.. Partners in Crime, Prerana and Adrienne Furniss ('12) participated in Parli Debate as well as Partial Double-Octo-Finals, competing with the top 24 teams in the state. Overall, Varsha placed 14th out of 260 debaters and Prerana placed 15th out of 566 debaters. Way to go ND! We had a great year and hopefully more to come. We will miss our graduating seniors and we wish them all the best as they head off to college!
Speech & Debate & Performing Arts Banquet 2011-12
On Thursday, May 3, 2012, Notre Dame hosted the annual end of the year Speech and Debate/ Performing Arts Banquet to honor all the girls' hard work and success through out the school year. At the event, the Freshmen Debate Team sparred and Kitty Lan ('13) performed her OI. Awards were given out to Shannon Trinh ('14) for Novice MVP Speech, Meredith Duflock ('15) for Novice MVP Debate, Nhada Ahmed ('13) for Most Dedicated, Madhulika Krishnan ('12) for MVP Speech, and finally, Prerana Vaddi ('12) for MVP Debate.
Second Semester Success!
Forensics has been having an excellent second semester,especially now that we are in the midst of the heavy tournament season!
We started things off right at the Milpitas Tournaments Jan 28&29. At the Individual Event tournament on Saturday, we had 4 ND students break to semi-finals and place quite highly in very competitive fields. Placing 8th in Impromptu (out of 140!) was Freshman Anisha Chemmachel and in Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking (out of over 50) was Senior Prerana Vaddi. Placing 10th in Oratorical Interpretation (out of over 100!) was Junior Kendra Glenn. Placing 13th in Original Prose and Poetry was Freshman Meredith Duflock. At Sunday's Debate tournament, Junior Audrey Barber went an impressive 3-1 in Varsity Lincoln-Douglas debate! Well done!
At both Stanford and Cal, ND distinguished themselves further. At Stanford, Sophomore Varsha Sathappan broke to Quarter-finals in Impromptu and Semi-finals in Original Oratory (both events with over 100 contestents!) and Sophomore Mirai Shah placed 4th in Impromptu! AMAZING!! At Cal this year we had the most students break to Quarter finals than ever before in years past. We're also seeing a growth in the team, which has grown all the closer in the previous months. We're lookng forward to the State Qual season coming up in March. If you're interested in volunteering to judge at any of these tournaments, even if you can only commit to one round, please e-mail Mrs. Botsch-McGuinn at smcguinn@ndsj.org. You can also keep checking iVolunteer for more Speech and Debate volunteer opportunities!
Forensics Cal Invitational Update (read more)
In the Forensics world it was non-stop business from Friday until yesterday afternoon, as this weekend marked the Cal Berkeley Invitational at the beautiful UC Berkeley campus. This prestigious tournament included more than 4,000 competitors from all over the country! In Speech, Adrienne Furniss broke to Octo finals in Impromptu, Prerana Vaddi broke to Octo finals in Impromptu and Quarter finals in Extemp, and both Mirai Shah and Varsha Sathappan broke to Quarter finals in Impromptu! Wow! Considering there were almost 200 competitors in Impromptu, the fact that ND had 4 in the top 48 and 2 in the top 24 is completely amazing!!!
Notre Dame Student Named Academic All American (Read More)
Notre Dame senior, Prerana Vaddi, was recently honored as an Academic All American by the National Forensics League (NFL), the oldest and largest interscholastic forensic organization in the United States. The honor of Academic All American is earned by less than one percent of seniors.
Great Fun in 2011!
Great Job on finishing 2011 ladies! Your hard work has definitely paid off through the year. We have seen Varsha Sathappan place 5th in OA at the Milpitas Fall IE and Super Debate tournament, and earning herself a wildcard to the State Qualification tournament in March! Prerana Vaddi honored as an Academic All American by the National Forensics League (NFL), the oldest and largest interscholastic forensic organization in the United States. Here are some quotes from our members highlighting 2011:
"The increased interaction between the students and faculty has essentially enabled our debate team to thrive and take its place as one of California's top ten parliamentary debate schools. It's truly rewarding to be a part of a young team that consists of passionate and hard working individuals. I couldn't have asked for anything better."
-Prerana Vaddi '12
"I'd never done Speech or Debate before I came to Notre Dame, and when I started I didn't know much about politics. But the people in Speech and Debate inspired me to learn faster, try harder, and come up with different ways of understanding.The team is my family- we have our ups and downs, we argue a lot, and we love each other."
-Meredith Duflock '15
Link to Forms
Link to Important Forms
SCU Dempsey-Cronin Invitational (read more)
This weekend marked one of the biggest tournaments for the year for us, the Santa Clara University Dempsey-Cronin Invitational. Prerana Vaddi (Extemp), Mirai Shah (IMP and TI), and Claire Strickland (OO) all broke into semifinals! Varsha Sathappan placed 5th in OO and 3rd in IMP and Meredith Duflock placed 3rd in OPP. This was a very tough competition and they all did an amazing job! Ms. McGuinn even exclaims, “This year was our best ever showing for debate, which is what I am particularly proud of. Of our 8 debate teams, all but 2 had winning records, and 3 broke to eliminations, where they advanced quite far.”
Milpitas Fall IE and Super Debate Tournament
This weekend was the Milpitas Fall IE and Super Debate tournaments at Milpitas High School. It was the largest event in league history, with nearly 3000 students competing over the course of the weekend, making the tournament as big, if not BIGGER, than several national tournaments meaning when there are 60-140 students in an event, getting to the top 14 is an AMAZING accomplishment! Even given the very impressive level of competition we had 7 semi-finalists and one student final receive a wildcard! Anisha and Mirai in IMP semi-finaled in the largest event with over 140 students, needing to combine a preliminary score of 4 with at least 1 first place to enter. Michelle and Izzy in HI as two novice students semi-finaled with over 60 competitors. Claire Strickland in OO semi-finaled as the only freshman in this second largest event with over 110 entries. Alexa and Varsha in OA semi-finaled in the high level competition in the event where the state champion in OA has been from our league 5 out of the last 7 years. Congrats to all of these ladies!! Our finalist was Varsha Sathappan, who placed 5th in OA in a very tough competition, and she earned herself a wildcard to the State Qualification tournament in March!On Sunday was the debate team's turn to shine. Representing ND were Nureen Khadr & Ameera Naguib (12) in Varsity Parliamentary Debate, Ciara Zambo & Meredith Duflock (15) in Junior Varsity Parliamentary Debate, and Audrey Barber (13) in Lincoln-Douglas Debate. ND's Parli teams who both went 3-1 and only lost in their last rounds! Way to go, ND!
Notre Dame scores at Los Gatos High School!
Notre Dame scores at Los Gatos High School with eleven amazing students competing from all range of events including Original Oratory, Original Advocacy, Humorous Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, Original Prose and Poetry, and Impromptu on Saturday, October 22, 2011. Participates included Shayda Barforoshi (OO), Anisha Chemmachel (IMP), Melissa cuevas (
HI), Meredith Duflock (OPP), Nikita Jain (OA), Jennifer Kim (IMP), Jane Matchak (IMP), Michelle Pashby (HI), Claire Strickland (OO), Shannon Trinh (DI), and Izzy Ullmann (HI).We had almost all students move on into the semifinals where many performed into the Finals, leaving five students to take titles-
Anisha Chemmachel placed 3rd ,
Michelle Pashby placed 5th,
Claire Strickland placed 6th,
Shannon Trinh placed 2nd, and
Izzy Ullmann placed 2nd. Keep it up, girls!
First Forensics Event for the 2011-12 School Year!
This weekend marked the first forensics event for the year-our league's Demo Day at Los Altos High School. New students from all of the league's schools came to watch the 12 speech and 4 debate events, while parents learned to judge. As predicted with our record number of new students, we had the most new students attend that I can recall-14. We also had several Notre Dame girls present demonstration speeches, showing themselves as leaders in the league. Megan Gallagher ('12) performed her dramatic interpretation of "The Telltale Heart", which was very popular among students and who proclaimed it "amazingly creepy in a really good way". Megan was pleased with the compliment, I assure you. Gurveen Sekhon ('12) presented a congressional debate, and was joined by Nhada Ahmed ('13) to present a demonstration of parliamentary debate, where they convincingly argued that the parents right to know the activities of their children online was more important than a child's right to privacy. This is the 3rd year running that Notre Dame has presented parliamentary debate, so therefore in Notre Dame fashion, it is now a tradition.
Kirkland and Naguib Break the Curse!
On Oct. 17, 2 teams of Parli debaters squared off at the first Parli/Pofo tournament of the year. Representing ND were Maddie Kirkland and Ameera Naguib (’12) and Sonali Avlani and Sayeri Lala (’13). This tournament traditionally is not very successful for ND (we’ve gone 0-4 across the board the last 3 years!), but “the fall Parli curse” has been lifted! Against a tough slate, Maddie and Ameera went 2-2, showing their debate prowess and the potential for ND debate this year. Great job girls!
Speech Communication Demonstrates at Lowell
On Friday Oct. 22, 2 ND students from the Speech Communication class (Trixie Ilas (’14) and Julia Luna (’14) ) took their skills in speech on the road to present their demonstration speeches to the 4th graders at Lowell Elementary School. The girls wrote speeches and adapted them to their audience of elementary students, choosing Volleyball and Soccer as their topics. The students enjoyed the speeches during their lunch and were excited to see “Big Kids” come talk to them. What a great way for ND to reach out to the community! Great job girls!
ND Forensics Stand Out at 2nd Annual Robert Garcia Tournament
"ND Speech and Debate is in full swing, with ND students poised for a great year after participating in the Robert Garcia Invitational at St. Francis High School Sept. 24-26, 2010. Three students competed, with all three making it to final rounds of competition. Representing ND were: Adrienne Furniss and Prerana Vaddi (both '12) competing in both Parliamentary Debate and Impromptu and Gurveen Sekhon ('12) competing in Congressional Debate. Prerana placed 2nd in Impromptu and 3rd in Parli, and Adrienne placed 3rd, and the pair went 3-3 in Parli debate. Gurveen was named the 4th Congressional Speaker. All 3 are officers on the team, and showed both their skills and leadership in their excellent results. Great job girls!".