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Feb. 23, 2018
Speech & Debate Team wins invitational
The Upper St. Clair High School Speech & Debate Team were the overall team tournament champions at the Bethel Park Black Hawk Invitational on Feb. 9-10, 2018, at Bethel Park middle and high schools.
The Black Hawk Invitational is the largest annual tournament in the tri-state area with more than 600 competitors from 42 schools in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
Upper St. Clair placed first as a team in debate for the fifth consecutive year and third overall in speech.
The team also had a large number of individual achievements:
In debate, the Parliamentary debate team had a terrific weekend, taking all four semifinal and final places. The team of Vivek Babu, Sunny Chai and Jami Stout defeated Ethan Bowman, Steven Cheung and Jacob Lantzman for the tournament championship. Third and fourth place belonged to the teams of Mathena Jencka, Amanda Ross and Anika Sinha as well as Basir Khan, Ayush Sharma and Chand Vadalia.
The Lincoln-Douglas team had great success as well. Abby Riemer advanced to the semifinals (top 4) and Nadith Dharmasena made the quarterfinals (top 8), while Eshita Chhajlani made Partial Double-Octofinals (top 20).
In Public Forum, Christian Chiu and Harrison Chui were Partial Double-Octofinalists and Ariana Chiu and Ava White were Octofinalists (top 16).
In Congress, Daniel Speer placed fifth and John Joyce sixth while Alex Lampe and Caroline Wolfe were semifinalists (top 12).
In speech, the team of Wyatt Keating and Shebl Rosati won the tournament championship in Duo by seven ranks. Meanwhile, Mayka Chaves took home second and Joe Phillips was fourth in Prose, the largest speech event. Paarth Shankar also placed sixth in Extemporaneous Speaking.
Semifinalists (Top 12) included Maddie Nolen (Prose), Laura Lapham (Humor), Grace Blumenfeld (Oratory), and Hashim Durrani (Drama). Quarterfinalists (Top 24) included Atharva Barve (Extemp), Sammy Levy and Bryce Keating (Prose), and Ben Holthaus (Humor).
The Upper St. Clair Speech & Debate Team won overall sweepstakes titles at Hampton and Mercer in January and Pittsburgh Central Catholic in December, while placing second overall at Pine-Richland in January and North Catholic in December. This past weekend USC captured its final regular season tournament at West Allegheny in speech, debate and overall.
Next up for the Speech & Debate Team is the Pennsylvania High School Speech League District 3 Qualifier, which is set for this Saturday, Feb. 24, at Moon Area High School.
