The Official Student News Site of Parkway West High

Pathfinder
The Official Student News Site of Parkway West High

Pathfinder
The Official Student News Site of Parkway West High

Pathfinder
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.

Eyes on the pies: the Speech & Debate team raises money to honor alumnus memory

Triya Gudipati, Editor-in-Chief • December 1, 2022

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...

Seniors Gokul Venkatachalam, Kristina Humphrey and Luke Donovan pose with their plaques from the district tournament. Venkatachalam will go to nationals in the “Policy Debate” event and Humphrey and Donovan will compete in the “Duo Interpretation” event. “I’ve never been to the national tournament before,” Humphrey said. “I know it’s very competitive because you’re competing against a bunch of national qualifiers. I hope we can do well, and I doubt we’ll make the final stage, but we’re going to try as hard as we can.”

Debate team has emotional return to nationals

Peyton Gaskill, STAFF WRITER • May 14, 2019

After a successful districts tournament, the speech and debate team will send six students to compete in three different events at the national tournament in Dallas this June. The events of last year have...

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."

Speech and debate team honors Haran Kumar through tournament

Kathryn McAuliffe, Managing Editor-in-Chief • October 2, 2018

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...