Aria Dandawate won the national championship in Programmed Oral Interpretation, a new event at the national tournament where students combine prose, poetry, and drama to develop an artistic approach to an argument. Her subject is the "Whitewashing of Hollywood." If you would like to see her performance, you can go to http://livestream.com/Nats16Stream1/FinalsDay1 and advance the video to 02:50.
Vaikunth Balaji took 3rd place in International Extemporaneous Speaking. Vaikunth received his topic, "Is there a realistic path to stability for Ukraine?" 30 minutes before speaking. The event requires a seven-minute presenation without notes, including source citations. You can currently find Vaikunth's speech at http://livestream.com/Nats16Stream1/FinalsDay2 at 03:23:10.
Eric Wan achieved 2nd place in Congressional Debate and Katie Kleinle took 7th place. Their final round isn't accessible online at this time, but you can see Eric claim his award at http://livestream.com/Nats16Stream1/FinalsDay2 at 11:44:58 and Katie claim her award at 10:14:05.
Shawn Kant took fifth place in Extemporaneous Commentary. His event is similar to Vaikunth's in that he receives the topic 20 minutes prior to speaking, but the topics in this event are more open-ended. You can find his presentation at http://livestream.com/Nats16Stream2/SuppsCons-MSawards at 05:13:00.
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Clare Halsey, Shankar Krishnan, Vikram Kalghatgi, and Collin Montag also received recognition in the tournament. As a team, we were named a School of Outstanding Distinction which honors the top ten teams out of the 1000+ at the event. This was the best Ridge has ever performed at this event.
