On Friday, February 10th, the Upper St. Clair Forensics Team wore suits to school in anticipation of a two-day long tournament at Bethel Park High School. After five preliminary rounds, two elimination rounds, and a final round, the USC team did incredibly well, with a few historic wins. The team’s successes included great performances in Lincoln Douglas debate, Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Original Oratory, and Prose. Competition included Mount Lebanon High School, Peters Township High School, and North Alleghany High School. The team is now looking forward to the qualifying tournaments for nationals and States.

The USC forensics team dressed up on Friday and left straight from school to begin the tournament, with three great preliminary rounds on Friday night. Despite the snowfall Friday night and early the next morning, the team returned for two more preliminary rounds on Saturday morning. Results of the preliminary rounds came in at about noon, thanks in part to one of the team’s coaches, Mr. Benjamin Edwards, who was helping to collect and organize the results in the tabulation room. The tournament, which featured competitors from four states and a total of over 1,000 speakers, was incredibly competitive. Even so, the USC team qualified many speakers and debaters into quarterfinals, including sophomore Benjamin Stalnaker in Lincoln-Douglas debate and seniors Vijay and Vinay Viswanathan in Extemporaneous Speaking. Team competitors in semifinals included Lincoln-Douglas debater Qinglan Huang.

Due to this impressive performance, at the awards ceremony, the USC forensics team took first in overall team competition, with a first place win in debate team competition and a third place win in speech team competition. This was an historic win for the team, which has never placed so well at a tournament as large or as competitive as the Bethel Invitational. Also impressive were two USC speech finalists; senior John Kulp finished fifth in Humorous Interpretation and junior Trudel Pare placed third in Original Oratory. Overall, the team was very happy with its performance. Freshman Sriparna Sen said, “The Bethel Tournament this past weekend was a blast. Being part of this forensics family is an honor.”

With such an impressive win at Bethel, the team is looking forward to a great end of the season. “The amount of sweat and passion put into our victory was amazing and makes me feel optimistic about the future of our team,” stated senior Vinay Viswanathan. There are three qualifying tournaments coming up; the State Tournament Qualifier, the National Forensics League Nationals Qualifier, and the Catholic Forensics League Nationals Qualifier. The team hopes to make as impressive a showing at these tournaments as it did at Bethel, sending a portion of the team to both the two national tournaments in Indianapolis and Baltimore and States. This weekend, the team will attend a tournament at West Alleghany High School, with some of the team going to a national circuit tournament at Harvard University in Boston. Good luck USC Forensics!