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West High Wins State 6A Debate Championship

West High School swept the debate and speech competition over the weekend, winning the State 6A Debate Championship, the school's third straight state championship (skipping only 2020, when the event was canceled due to the pandemic). The Panthers accumulated 125 points in the victory, compared to 66 points for the second-place team.

West High individual results are:

Foreign Extemporaneous, with 25 entries:
1st Place - Cash Mendenhall
4th Place - Alicia Du
Original Oratory, with 37 entries:
5th Place - Audrey Young
7th Place - Diya Oommen
8th Place - Priyasna Sharma
Impromptu, with 39 entries:
15th Place - Megan Tandar
Policy, with 17 entries:
1st Place - Taisei Summerhays & Ethan Wall
3rd Place - Sterling Peterson & Ishan Sharma
4th Place - Seiji Aoki & Saathvik Pai
5th Place - Madeline Galian & Hanna Rice
Lincoln Douglas, with 33 entries:
3rd Place - Amrita Krishna
Public Forum, with 23 entries:
1st Place Co-Champion - Daphne Liu & Noa Taussky
1st Place Co-Champion - Ronak Agarwal & Brendon Young
2nd Place - Marianne Liu & Cleo Mussett Shaw
4th Place - Lydia May & Sharayu Senthilkumar
National Extemporaneous, with 25 entries:
3rd Place - Adelaide Parker
Congress, with 31 entries:
6th Place - Anika Rao
7th Place - Olivia Hoffmann
8th Place - Tanya Yu

Many debate coaches at other schools thought the pandemic hurt their team's performance this year, but West High's team members showed how to triumph over that adversity, as they are the only team in the entire state that has still not practiced nor met in person in over a year. 

In addition to the students’ individual successes, head coach Susan Raymond was voted by her peers as the 6A Debate Coach of the Year.