In just under a month, the Robinson Speech and Debate team will be attending a competition at Harvard University. This opportunity comes off of the back of their participation in a similar tournament at Yale, as well as other local and regional competitions.
“We hold weekly practices and attend online scrimmages,” Ayan Nallamshetty (’25), the club’s co-president, said. “Yale taught us that we need to adapt our speaking and debating strategy depending on where we are competing to make the most persuasive argument. We have integrated this into our practice by focusing on different types of argumentation.”
For example, during the competitions team members break off from the group and perform in their own specialization of speech and debate. Nallamshetty, spoke about his own competition type and some examples of what other students compete in,
“For example, I’m competing in extemporaneous speaking [a type of competition in which participants research a topic (often current events-based), then improvise a speech about that topic],” Nallamshetty said.
They have attended various local and regional competitions where they have honed their skills in the varied competition types.
“My most memorable experience was last week [the week of the 6th] at the Sunvite national tournament hosted by NSU,” Nallamshetty said. “I placed 2nd nationally in extemporaneous speaking along with my other teammates. We all did very well and improved drastically.”
Both Nallamshetty and co-president Devan Patel (’25) described the various challenges in competing in larger competitions as well as Harvard specifically.
“The biggest challenge has been entering the national circuit,” Patel said. “Our chapter began competing at college tournaments this year, among the likes of Yale, Harvard, and [the University of Florida]. Succeeding at these tournaments is very difficult, even for the best of us. However, the biggest reward was seeing all of the new competitors transform into driven, competitive members.”
In contrast to Patel’s focus on success at the tournaments themselves, Nallamshetty spoke about the logistic troubles the team has faced while organizing transportation to larger national competitions.
“The largest challenge has been getting the resources to compete nationally,” Nallamshetty said. “Each tournament costs a large sum of money, and we want to reduce the cost for our competitors.”
The team has built a consistent practice schedule and intends to continue approaching competitions in a focused and deliberate manner. The team’s hard work is consistently displayed through their weekly practices and their dedication outside of school in order to hone their skills for the larger competitions. Those on the team mark their experiences as being rewarding but difficult.
“Being one of the mentors for debate has taught me so much about communicating and leading, when to take charge and when to let others learn lessons for themselves,” said Patel. “I’ve been teaching concepts all year, types of arguments that I barely even understood myself, and as a result, I’ve grown a tremendous amount.”
As the biggest tournament of the year for the speech and debate team, the team has been working hard to prepare for the upcoming Harvard tournament. The competition itself will be held on the weekend of Feb. 15.
“The thing that excites me the most about competing at Harvard is that it’s the biggest tournament of the year,” said Nallamshetty. “It’s a great challenge for all of our competitors, and this time, we have adequately prepared for the national scene, on both the speech side and debate side, and I know we’ll see success on both fronts.”
List of Competitors (list subject to change ahead of competition): Maya Moore, John Joura, Ammar Omar, Anyeline Moreno, Alina Diaz, Beckett Vidrine, Blaire Bowles, Rishi Kamdar, Isabella Musolino, Lucy Borunda, Vasilios Panos, Griffin Kurtz, Tania Mulay, Lillian Walker, Rishi Kamdar, and Nitin Kurup
