Two seniors on Revere High School’s Speech and Debate team continue to build on success from last year in their quest for the state finals in congressional debate competition.
Anish Chandran started his debate career in sixth grade and Saumya Sharma in eighth grade. Now entering their senior year, Chandran and Saumya bring years of experience to improve their skills and to teach the next generation of high school debaters.
Speech and debate has four types of events: policy debates, Lincoln-Douglas debate, public forum debate, and congressional debates. Chandran and Sharma both compete in the congressional events.
In congressional speech and debate, students called “congressional debaters” act as representatives of Congress. In these competitions, congressional debaters advocate for and against hypothetical bills and policies.
For multiple years, Revere had a successful Speech and Debate team, being ranked in multiple regular season and state tournaments.
Melanie Stuthard, the congressional coach of Revere’s speech and debate team, was immediately impressed by their performance at the state tournament.
“Revere had three students that made it to the state finals out of the entire state. We were the only school in the state of Ohio that had three,” Stuthard said.
Stuthard was newly appointed last year, and admits she did not know how Chandran and Sharma would match up against competition across the state.
“I did not have anything to base it on. What I learned last year was because I judged most of the tournaments, I was able to see who they were going up against, and Saumya (Sharma) and Anish (Chandran) can hold their own and beat most people in the state of Ohio,” Stuthard said.
Two of the three of those students were then juniors, Chandran and Sharma.
Both Sharma and Chandran were state finalists last year. This year both have made it a goal for themselves to return to the state finals and improve on their performances from last year.
“I want to make a state finals again, probably place, really just do better than last year, and honestly just have fun,” Sharma said.
“Making it to national finals is different from making it to finals of a national circuit tournament. It is a much bigger moment and I think that’s something that would be really cool,” Chandran said.
To reach their goal of making it to the national tournament, Chandran and Sharma identified some areas where they can improve from last year.
“I think the biggest thing last year was not preparing a lot. I definitely had a lot of distractions for a month and didn’t spend as much time as I would like to have on preparing for tournaments,” Sharma said.
“Something I think I can improve on for sure is being able to adapt to any situation. Also being able to give a speech at any time regardless of how much preparation you have,” Chandran said.
Stuthard sees Chandran’s and Sharma’s dedication and pursuit to become better, and hopes that they will be an example for the middle school speech and debate team to strengthen the program.
“I’m excited that we have the middle school kids in with the high school students. That’s new this year, and I’m hoping what that does is it gives the middle school kids a chance to hear people like Saumya [Sharma] and Anish [Chandran] give speeches, which I think will only help them. So the long term goal is to build the program,” Stuthard said.
To read more about Speech and Debate at Revere CLICK HERE
