Ridge Forensics excels at National Championship

This past weekend, the Ridge Forensics team competed at the 2014 National Catholic Forensic League Grand National tournament in Chicago, IL.  Out of the 590 teams attending the event, Ridge received the Daniel S Masterson Cup, naming them as one of the top five overall performing teams at the tournament, along with the Eleanor Wright cup, recognizing them as one of the top five teams in debate events. 

Students who advanced into the late elimination rounds include senior Michael Cervino who took 2nd place honors in Congressional Debate, the team of senior Kevin Yang & junior Tim O'Shea who advanced to the final round in Public Forum debate, and Connor Murphy who took sixth place honors in Congressional Debate.  In addition, two other Ridge teams advanced to the quarter-final level in Public Forum debate: juniors Davis George & Saloni Singhvi and the senior team of Nikhil Kapadia & Sunjay Melkote.  This is particularly noteworthy since three of the top eight teams at the tournament (out of 228 teams entered) were from Ridge. 

Director of Forensics, David Yastremski, comments, “the Newark district is a very competitive district.  To even qualify for this event takes a great amount of work and commitment.  To see Ridge named as one of the five best teams in the nation is such an honor that these students truly deserve.”  This year marked the highest amount of qualifying entries by the Ridge team at the event with 32 students representing the Newark district. 

Other students who advanced into elimination rounds include seniors Emily Woo, Jack Wilson, Caitlin Schiffer, Deep Singhvi, Danny Van Nest, Alec Pan and Atreya Misra; juniors Amy Zhong, AJ D'Ambrosio, and Asli Pekcan; sophomores Timothy Tang, Jasmine Xie, Rana Shahani, Shawn Kant, Vaikunth Balaji, and Kate Kleinle. Also entered into the event were Nidhi Mahagaokar, Rishabh Puri, Matt Hansen, Darius Hunt, Sam Hoffman, Raeann Titus, Kaitlin Smalling, and Amanda Luthy.

The Ridge team will compete at their final tournament in June when they will travel to Kansas City for the National Speech and Debate Association Championships.  

Yastremski furthers, “we have a record amount of qualifiers for NSDA as well with eighteen students attending.  In order to fund these trips, we have been fundraising all year to afford the plane tickets, hotel costs, and entry fees.  We still have a great need to help subsidize the costs for students and their families.

Anyone who would like to make a contribution to the team’s national tournament fund may do so at the Give Youth a Voice portal for the Ridge team at http://tiny.cc/rfnationals.  Yastremski comments, “if every alumni and friend of the team gave a small amount, it would really help our campaign this year.  We’ve also received some help from community members that we met during Charter Day this year.  We’re so appreciative of any assistance the Basking Ridge community can provide.  We really need the funds.” The Give Youth a Voice website is sponsored by a 501(c)3 organization so donations through that portal, are tax deductible.  The portal will close on June 1st of this year.  Other donations can be mailed directly to the school at Ridge Forensics, c/o Reyne Juechter, Ridge High School, 268 South Finley Ave, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920.

Further information on the team can be found by visiting www.RidgeForensics.com.