When most Upper St. Clair students think of a team traveling to States, they think of the 2006 PIAA State Champion Football Team or the 2008 PIAA State Champion Varsity Tennis Team. However, one successful team, which is often overlooked, is the Upper St. Clair Forensics Team. This team, which specializes in speech and debate, recently qualified 11 students to the Pennsylvania High School Speech League State Finals, and they hope to bring back the coveted PHSSL State Champion plaque to Upper St. Clair.
The Pennsylvania High School Speech League was founded in 1961 and is based in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania (www.phssl.org). Not only does the league oversee most local tournaments, but the program also coordinates a yearly speech tournament. The tournament is held on the premises of Susquehanna University on March 25-26 this year (www.pittsburghnfl.com).
Each school that seeks to attend the state tournament sends two students to what is known as the Qualifying Tournament. At the Qualifying Tournament, each individual or debate team competes with other students from the region to earn one of three exclusive spots to attend the state competition. Freshman Aditya Thakur said, “[The State Tournament] is the high point of the state forensics league.”
Upper St. Clair High School forensics compete at Region 3, which is one of the most highly competitive districts and includes Central Catholic, Bethel Park, Lakeview Christian Academy, Mt. Lebanon, and Peters Township. While the competition is stiff, USC Forensics has a history of success at the State Tournament. In 2010, the team had five students make final rounds and States, with John Kulp earning 6th place in Humorous Interpretation and with now-graduate Pankaj Aggarwal earning 2nd place in Oral Interpretation of Poetry.
This year proved to be highly successful. The entire team spent weeks practicing exhaustively. Ben Stalnaker, who qualified in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, said, “[The Qualifying Tournament was] the moment we’ve been waiting for all year.”
Freshman Jordan Ryan, who qualified in Parliamentary Debate, said, “We’ve had 6-hour practices in anticipation.”
In the end, qualifiers included the team of Brinda Doshi, Jordan Ryan, and George Sun for parliamentary debate, Kylee Banton for the interpretation of prose, Catherine Wertz and Madison Chaffin for the interpretation of poetry, John Kulp for humorous interpretation, and Brent Heard for extemporaneous (www.uscforensics.org).
Alternates include Alberto Escobar for interpretation of prose, and the team of Yasaswi Duvuru, Syndney Turnwald, and Lauren Montgomery for parliamentary debate (www.uscforensics.org).