Ridge Speech and Debate Team wins 15th consecutive state championship.

The Ridge Forensics Team, Ridge High School’s interscholastic speech and debate program, achieved its fifteenth consecutive Overall Team Championship title this past weekend at the 2016 New Jersey Speech and Debate League’s State Championship held at the Bridgewater-Raritan School District.

The team, comprised of seventy-nine students who qualified for the event, took the title with 271.5 points, followed by Summit High School, who took 2nd place, with 205 points and 3rd place Montville Township with 136. Freehold Township, Millburn, and Princeton High Schools rounded out the top six.

Ridge also took first place Debate Sweepstakes honors with 104 points beating Millburn, 88 points, and Princeton, 78 points. The team took 2nd place Speech Sweepstakes honors with 167.5, finishing just beneath Summit High School who achieved 170.5.

Ridge Director of Forensics, David Yastremski, commented on the competiveness of this year’s tournament, “New Jersey has several nationally-ranked teams. This year, the competition was immense; the point margins were very close. We knew going in that several teams were contending for the top spot. Our students were determined not to lose the fifteenth year milestone; they worked so hard during the entire weekend. It was great to see how they came together.”

Several Ridge students were named State Champions in their events: Vaikunth Balaji in International Extemporaneous Speaking, Shawn Kant in Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking, Daniel Perez in Original Oratory, Aria Dandawate in Programmed Oral Interpretation, Aditya Sheth in Varsity Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Marko Cukar in Novice Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and Katherine Kleinle in Congressional Debate.

State runners-up, who took second place titles, included Collin Montag in International Extempornaeous Speaking, Vaikunth Balaji in Impromptu Speaking, Ben Levy in Congressional Debate, and the team of Rajan Gupta and Brian McCormick in Varsity Public Forum debate.

Other finalists and elimination round participants included seniors Sanya Gupta, Clare Halsey, Rana Shahani, Eric Wan, and Krista Webster, juniors Daanyal Farooqi, Vikram Kalghatgi, Patrick Kirkwood, Matt Perez, Adit Roy, Chandni Singhvi, and Druhi Vandse, sophomores Ryhan Moghe, Anvitha Prasad, Tarun Puppala, Sanil Torani, and Lucy Wei, and freshmen Camille Furst, Kishan Gandham, Rohan Jinturkar, Nastassja Kuznetsova, Kalyani Pradeep, Hannah Usadi, Emily Wang, and Michelle Zhu.

Students who won state championships will receive a scholarship from the New Jersey Speech and Debate League, and those champions at the varsity level will be presented a 2016 Governor's Award in Arts Education from the New Jersey Arts Education Partnership.

The Ridge Team will be competing this upcoming weekend at the New Jersey District Tournament for the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA), held at Summit High School. Four students have already qualified for the NSDA National Championship which will be held in Salt Lake City in June: Katherine Kleinle in Congressional Debate, Eric Wan in Congressional Debate, Vaikunth Balaji in Congressional Debate, and Shawn Kant in Extemporaneous Speaking.

Photos taken by Ashley Yang and Amy Zhang