After spending a weekend in Las Vegas, Upper School debater Pranav Reddy (11) was named champion of the Golden Desert Invitational.

The Golden Desert Invitational in Lincoln Douglas debate, from Jan. 31 through Feb. 3, was held at the University of Las Vegas.

Pranav competed against more than 100 people at Las Vegas in the national event, with most debaters coming from the West Coast.

The competition started with six preliminary rounds which then broke to double octofinals, rounds of thirty-two debaters. After that round of competition, the the debates were single elimination until the finals. There were eleven rounds in total.

In the weeks leading up to the invitational, Pranav cut time out of his schedule to prepare.

I spent close to an hour or two hours a day prepping for about two weeks before the tournament. I think I did well in making arguments that I heard in the literature and being able to summarize positions that I had read as much, but maybe knew a little bit about.

Looking back, Pranav felt that he should have been “freaking out less” before rounds of the competition.

According to the Official Harker Forensics Group, all Harker teams at the invitational made it to elimination rounds, and five of the top twenty speakers were Upper School students.

Forensics hosted a Friday after-school study session tonight on campus preparing for Stanford and Berkeley Public Forum, this weekend and the next, respectively.