Follow the Speech and Debate team’s journey to Rock Bridge High School in Columbia, Missouri. They compete at their first overnight tournament following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Oct. 14 and 15, the Parkway West Speech and Debate Team kicked off the competitive season by hosting their first in-person tournament since 2019. While running the tournament, the raised money for Every...
Thomas Bruns, Opinions/A&E editor
• December 10, 2020
Switching from running around rooms, to managing Zooms, the debate team made history by hosting Eastern Missouri’s biggest debate tournament, Oct. 6-7. Led by head coach and debate teacher Cara Borgsmiller,...
Alumni Haran Kumar’s legacy will be integrated into the first speech and debate Eastern Missouri invitational tournament, hosted at Parkway West Oct. 12 and 13.
“We want to live the things that...
Tyler Kinzy, Managing Editor-in-Chief
• May 10, 2018
After posting a combined 13-1 record at the Eastern Missouri district tournament, junior Gokul Venkatachalam and senior Haran Kumar qualified for the 2018 National Speech & Debate Tournament in policy...
During the final weekend of January, Jefferson City High School hosted their annual debate tournament for teams all around the state.
“There was a bunch of different competition we normally don’t...
![Getting a running start, junior Vita Madamanchi prepares to pie Speech and Debate Head coach Cara Borgsmiller after winning a bid. Borgsmiller was one of the coaches who volunteered to get pied, to raise money for Every Child’s Hope at the Speech and Debate team’s annual fundraiser. “Once I closed [donations, the team] wanted to bid on Borgsmiller, and it was a 10-minute bidding match between Madamanchi and [senior] Noah Schell. Madamanchi won and ended up spending $45,” junior Serpil Kucukkaya said.](https://pwestpathfinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Vita2_page-0001-900x600.jpg)
![Juniors Rithvik Karthikeyan and Connor Olliff arrange trophies in the debate classroom after school Sept. 24. Olliff hopes that by replacing trophies with random objects, the team can best honor alumni Haran Kumar. "We’ve had to think about how we can better remember one of our graduates, and we want to hold [the tournament] in his honor," Olliff said. "We’re trying a lot harder to make it perfect this year so it’s in perfect remembrance of him."](https://pwestpathfinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/DSC_0196-900x600.jpg)
![With a trophy in hand, speech and debate coach Cara Borgsmiller congratulates senior Cheryl Ma. She alongside fellow senior Ryan O'Connor qualified for the 2018 National Speech & Debate Tournament in public forum debate after going undefeated at the Eastern Missouri district tournament. “It was really exciting. It was different than it is for most people because Ryan and I were undefeated the whole tournament, so they decided [we qualified] automatically even before the actual awards were announced since we were the only undefeated team,” Ma said. “We found out before the actual awards ceremony, so it relieved a lot of pressure because usually people are very anxious during awards.”](https://pwestpathfinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/DSC_0408-900x600.jpg)
![Freshmen Tyler Kinzy and Praveen Dharmavarapu work on their cases during free time in between rounds. Jefferson City High School hosted one of the last tournaments for debate teams around the state before districts. “I’ve done two tournaments so far and I’ve won first place at both of them, so it’s definitely been something surprising, especially to join this late in the season when everyone else has been [competing] for a while,” Kinzy said.](https://pwestpathfinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_0752-900x600.jpg)