A total of ten students from the upper school forensics program traveled to Dallas to compete at the Heart of Texas Invitational, a speech and debate competition, last weekend.

The tournament, hosted annually by St. Mark’s School in Dallas, Texas, invited high school speakers and debaters from across the country to compete against each other in multiple categories, including policy debate, Lincoln-Douglas debate and various speech events. A separate division, called the Sophomore Hoe Down, was reserved for elite sophomore policy teams.

Seniors Karen Qi and Panny Shan; juniors Manan Shah, Anika Jain, Srivatsav Pyda and Rahul Shukla; sophomores Alan Hughes and Megan Huynh; and freshmen Anusha Kuppahally and Nikhil Dharmaraj all competed at the tournament.

“Overall, Harker did pretty well in general, and we had a pretty strong showing in all parts of the tournament, so that was pretty exciting,” Manan said.

Debate coaches Jenny Alme and Greg Achten, who traveled with the competitors to Dallas, worked with the students on their speeches and helped them with in-depth research. For Lincoln-Douglas, the debaters addressed the topic Resolved: Adolescents ought to have the right to make autonomous medical choices; for policy, the September and October topic Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance.

“Original research is tough- by this point in the season, in both Lincoln-Douglas and policy, students are really thinking ahead about strategy,” Alme said. “There’s kind of a race across the country to outwork and out-research and out-think each other.”

Nikhil, who competed in the speech event Original Oratory, a category in which students give original speeches about problems facing the world today, advanced to the semifinal round and placed eighth out of 38 participants. Original Oratory competitors are often presented with the challenge of making their speech informative but also humorous.

“In my event, at least, getting the content down as well as finding a delivery style that suits your piece- some require different tones- then you have to try to say it out loud and see what sounds best,” Nikhil said. “Finding jokes is also very difficult.”

Megan and Anusha advanced to the semifinal round of the Sophomore Hoe Down and placed fourth out of 28 teams, finishing their run at the invitational with an overall record of 11 wins and one loss. Megan was also the second speaker overall out of all of the debaters who participated in the Sophomore Hoe Down.

Karen, who competed in varsity Lincoln-Douglas debate and advanced to the octafinal round of the event, looks back on steps she could have taken to better prepare for the tournament.

“Start preparing earlier,” Karen said. “I would maybe redo speeches or have practice debates in class and compile a few of the files each day so I don’t feel underprepared when I get to the tournament.”

The speech and debate team will be traveling to the Milpitas Super Debate, hosted by Milpitas High School, and the Jon Schamber Invitational, hosted by the University of the Pacific, later this month.