Schools

PHOTOS ADDED: Ridge Forensics Team Wins 10th State Championship

Ridge debate and speech team wins 10th consecutive state championship in two-day tournament held at Ridge High School.

The Ridge Forensics Team, Ridge High’s interscholastic speech and debate team, captured its tenth consecutive State Championship team title this past weekend at the 2011 New Jersey Forensic League Championships. The two-day event with 31 teams from around the state was held at Ridge High School, said the team's coach, David Yastremski.

The Ridge students won all three team awards: speech sweepstakes, debate sweepstakes, and overall, Yastremski said in a news release. Ridge advanced over the second and third place speech teams Matawan Regional and MontviIle Township, he said.

This year, the Ridge Forensics Team has 96 members, the largest ever, Yastremski said. 

Find out what's happening in Basking Ridgewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Yastremski said the team was formed in 1996, and entered its first championship event in 1997. He said he believes the team's success in sweeping the state's top championship, run under the auspices of the New Jersey Forensic League, may have something to do with the team's broad scope of achievement in multiple categories.

"I think one of the elements that makes this team different than a lot of the other teams in the state is we cover all of the events with a degree of success," Yastremski said on Monday. Other school teams may specialize in more specific areas, such as speech or dramatics, he said.

Find out what's happening in Basking Ridgewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The team also displayed a great deal of work ethic in this year's events, he added later. 

Over the weekend, the Ridge team placed first in debate, with Montville taking second place and Delbarton High School from Morristown taking third. Finally, in the overall category, Ridge bested second-place Montville and third-place Freehold Township.

During the event, several Ridge students were honored as State Champions in their individual events:

In the speech division, senior JiLon Li was named State Champion in two separate events: Original oratory and impromptu speaking. One of his subjects addressed lost romanticism, Yastremski said.

Senior Peter Vogel won the domestic extemporaneous speaking division. Junior Max Rappaport took first place honors in humorous interpretation with a story about a girl taking over a Little League team, in which Rappaport spoke all of the parts, Yastremski said.

Taking second place honors were Giancarlo Carnevale in declamation and Kelly Scharff in poetry reading. Junior Caitlin Murphy took third place honors in domestic extemporaneous speaking and fourth place honors in impromptu speaking.

Other finalists included seniors Jerry Christodoulatos, Carly Rosenberg, and Saniya Waghray,  juniors, Zoe Petitt, Adi Manohar, Nick Hansen, and freshman Gabriella Schnell. Kelly Scharff,  Saniya Wagray, Max Rappaport, and Gabriella Schnell also advanced to the semifinal level in other events.

Additional semifinalists included senior Brittany Kruger , juniors Lauren Doyle, Aditi Pai, Anish Patel, and Zoe Petitt,  sophomore Alina Razak, and freshmen Michelle Zhao, Sam Hoffman, and Gabriella Schnell. 

On the debate side of the tournament, senior Allison Douglis won the varsity Lincoln-Douglas Debate division with two Ridge students ‘closing out’ the final round in Novice Lincoln Douglas Debate. Both Vicki Liu, a sophomore, and Nancy Lee, a freshman, advanced to the final round. Instead of having teammates debate each other, tradition holds they are declared co-champions.

This year's topic of debate was taking a look at whether the U.S. is justified in using private military firms to protect national security, Yastremski said.

In addition, junior Eric Wei advanced to the final round in the junior varsity division and took second place honors in the Lincoln-Douglas debate.  Senior Howard Wei and freshmen Arianna Montero-Colbert and Jack Wilson also advanced into the ‘outrounds’ of the tournament.

In Public Forum Debate, two similar outcomes occurred. In the varsity division, the team of Brian Moore and Tejus Pradeep advanced to the final round along with their teammates, Christopher Winter and Adam Badrawi. Moore and Pradeep had recently made headlines by winning the Harvard University tournament, while Christopher and Adam reclaimed their State Championship titles from last year. In addition, the team of Sam Klein and Michael Shaw advanced to the semi-final level and the team of Rishi Narula and Nithya Gandham advanced to the quarterfinal level. 

But in addition, the Novice division provided the greatest surprise where all four teams that qualified for the event closed out the semi-final round, an unprecedented occurrence in New Jersey debate history, Yastremski said.

Each school only is allowed a maximum of four entries per event at the State Championship. "To have all four of a school’s teams advance to the quarterfinal level and be properly-seeded so that they don’t have to compete against one another is difficult enough, but to have all four win their quarterfinal round and advance to the semifinal is simply remarkable," Yastremski said.   

The novice teams are all freshman members: Michelle Lu and Deep Singhvi, Catherine Chen and Sunjay Melkote, Karn Dalal and Nikhil Kapadia, and the team of Kevin Yang and Robert Ju.

Eight of the 12 students in the final legislative round of the Congressional Debate were from the Ridge High School team. Junior Shivam Patel took the championship title with his teammate, junior Sam Schraer, taking second place honors. Senior George Philipose placed fourth and sophomore Farsha Rizwan placed sixth. Other Ridge finalists included juniors Claire Yao and Bardia Vaseghi, along with sophomore Nicole Castillo and freshman Michael Cervino. 

The New Jersey Forensic League participates with the New Jersey Governor’s Awards in Arts Education. All the varsity-level state champions will be honored at a ceremony in Trenton in May.

In addition, all the state champions, in all divisions, will receive a scholarship. The main coach for the Ridge Forensics Team is Yastremski, a Language Arts teacher, with assistants Laurie Johnson, Lynne Coyne, Kathy Stout, and Sarah Villar. Also helping the team are Jason Wood, Charlie Furman, and Danielle Taylor. 

The Ridge team will compete at the National Catholic Forensic League, open to public schools, and the National Forensic League National Qualifiers later in March. The NCFL Grand National tournament will be held in Washington D.C. in May while the NFL National Championship will be held in Dallas, Texas in June.

Students who are interested in the Ridge Forensics team for the 2011-2012 school year may contact Mr. David Yastremski at dyastremski@bernardsboe.com.  Since students currently are registering for next year’s classes, they may also enroll in either of the Ridge High School language arts elective courses: ‘Forensic Speaking’ or ‘Communication for Classroom, College, and Career.’ Both courses introduce students to the power of their public speaking skills and serve as a gateway to excellent speaking and communication skills. Further information can be obtained in the Ridge High School Program of Studies.

_ with Linda Sadlouskos


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here