Starting the new year off with a bang, Pine View’s Speech and Debate team headed to their first major tournament of the year— the Sunvitational Competition in Ft. Lauderdale from Jan. 13 to Jan 15.
After three days of competition, Pine View walked away with a handful of students who advanced out of preliminary rounds. In debate events, twelfth-grader Jack Fitzgerald semi-finaled in Congressional Debate. While Public Forum Debate (PFD) partners, tenth-graders Gopi Patel and Shivni Patel, broke to triple octo finals, top 64 advancing competitors, and eleventh-graders William Messina and Cian Graue alongside twelfth-graders Sahil Pankhaniya and Alex Pollatos broke to double octo finals, top 32 advancing competitors, in PFD.
Those within speech events had similar success this past weekend. In Duo Interpretation, partners tenth-graders Megan Hartnett and Ayra Nalluri, tenth-grader Ben Casey and eleventh-grader Harris Lichtenstein and eleventh-graders Amanda Gerulski and Sloane Kolesar broke to quarterfinals. Eleventh-grader Sana Rahman, twelfth-grader Ben Carry and twelfth-grader William Wang all broke to quarterfinals in Extemporaneous Speaking. Wang also broke to quarterfinals in Impromptu and eleventh-grader Nicholas Blake broke to semifinals in Informative Speaking. Eleventh-grader Sy Schimberg was able to get fourth place amongst over 120 competitors in Original Oratory.
“I love competing and learning new things from each tournament,” eleventh-grader Hannah Wang said. “It is nice to spend time with the team and it’s always a great feeling to see your team do well.”