Ridge Forensics Team Earns National Speech And Debate Honors

BASKING RIDGE (NJ) -- The Ridge Forensics team received two team awards at the recent National Speech and Debate Association National Championship which was held last week in Overland Park, Kansas.  The eighteen students achieved ‘Team of Excellence’ awards in both speech and debate events at the tournament.  The ‘Team of Excellence’ awards are presented to twenty high achieving schools at the tournament, out of over 1000 teams attending the event.  More than 4,000 speakers and debaters participated in the tournament billed as the world's largest academic competition.

Director of Ridge Forensics, David Yastremski, comments, we are grateful for receiving both awards; few schools achieve such high recognition in both genres of competition.  We have never qualified as many as eighteen students for this tournament, especially considering New Jersey is a very competitive state. These students worked exceptionally well throughout the year; it was great to see their success on the national stage.”

Students who advanced at the tournament include sophomore Vaikunth Balaji, who placed seventh out of 235 students in International Extemporaneous Speaking. Shawn Kant, sophomore, advanced to the top 30 in Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking, and the Duo Interpretation team of sophomore Kimberly Castillo and junior Anudeep Akenapalli advanced to the Top 60.  Senior Connor Murphy and juniors Allison Shim and Raina Karia progressed to the semi-final level in Congressional Debate, and the team of Tim O’Shea, junior, and Sunjay Melkote, senior, competed in the elimination rounds of Public Forum debate. Other Ridge students who qualified for the tournament include seniors Gabriella Schnell, Sabina Razak, Emily Woo, Michael Cervino, Atreya Misra, Deeptanshu Singhvi; juniors AJ D’Ambrosio and Amy Zhong, and sophomore Clare Halsey. 

In addition, David Yastremski was awarded his third diamond award, a coaching recognition by the National Speech and Debate Association, for his fifteenth year of coaching and cumulative success of the Ridge High School program.