13 Monte Vista Debate Team Students Heading to the National Forensic Tournament

Thirteen students from the Debate team qualified for National Forensic League's National Tournament June 9-16 in Indianapolis, IN at two separate qualifying meets held in the Bay Area.  

This will mark the 21st straight year that Monte Vista speech and debate students qualified for Nationals.

The top three students in each speech or debate event from the San Francisco Bay District qualified.  The Speech portion of the qualifier took place at El Cerrito HS March 24, while the Debate and Congress qualifier was hosted by College Prep HS in Oakland.  

The top speakers and debaters from as far away as Santa Rosa competed at the tournaments.  

Monte Vista finished first overall at the qualifying meets among the 27 schools in attendance and captured all three spots in Lincoln-Douglas Debate for only the second time in school history.  No other school has ever taken all three Lincoln-Douglas spots to Nationals.

The following students from Monte Vista qualified to Nationals:
Jonas Majewski, Foreign Extemporaneous

Neil Liu, Foreign Extemporaneous

Aaron Preiss, National Extemporaneous

Akhil Mathur, Humorous Interpretation

Gabe Bronshteyn, Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Vin Ganeshan, Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Brian Yu, Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Soumya Ramireddy, Public Forum Debate

Charlie Liao, Public Forum Debate

Rebecca Herman, Public Forum Debate

Joshua Herman, Public Forum Debate

Karna Adam, Congress Senate

Brian Jue, Congress House

In other news: The Monte Vista Mustangs will be sending 19 students to the State Championships in Speech and Debate April 27-29 in San Francisco.  In a separate ceremony at the State Tournament, long time Monte Vista Speech and Debate coach David Matley will be inducted into the California High School Speech Association Hall of Fame.

-Submitted by David Matley, Monte Vista speech and debate coach