The weekend of January 7-9, the Bells competed virtually in both the ASU and the MBA tournaments, with “incredibly strong performance, reaching finals at ASU in every event that we were entered in,” noted head coach Aaron Langerman ‘11.
Here are the ASU results:
Congressional Debate:
- Veer Juneja ’22 – 1st place, tournament champion
- Varun Vemulapalli ’23 – 5th place finalist
- Jason Cappelloni ’22 – semifinalist
Extemp:
- Ryan Alappatt ’22 – 1st place tournament champion
- Kush Narang ’22 – 2nd place finalist
- Francis Olakangil ’23 – 6th place finalist
Original Oratory (OO):
- Nathan Kang ’22 – 2nd place
- Michael Lutz ’22 – 4th place
- John Xu ’22 – semifinalist
- Alex Grabowski ’23 – semifinalist
- Arnav Dhingra ’23 – semifinalist
Duo Interp:
- Devansh Bansal ‘22 and Finbarr Donovan ’22 – 2nd place finalist
- Rishi Dinesh ’23 and Shiven Pandey ’23 – 4th place finalist
- Rohit Vakkalagadda ’24 and Surya Krishnapillai ’24 – semifinalist
Humorous Interp (HI):
- Finbarr Donovan ’22 – 6th place finalist
Dramatic Interp (DI):
- Ryan Milligan ’23 – 4th place finalist
- Alex Grabowski ’23 – 5th place finalist
Impromptu:
- Kush Narang ’22 – 2nd place finalist
- Arnav Dhingra ’23 – 5th place finalist
- Majid Shabbeer ’22 – semifinalist
- Anthony Reynolds ’22 – semifinalist
Informative (Expos):
- Owen Botkin ’23 – 3rd place
Program Oral Interp (POI):
- Devansh Bansal ’22 – 1st place tournament champion
Lincoln-Douglas (LD):
- Arshon Keyani ’23 – quarterfinalist (top 8)
Policy Debate:
- Ben Manens ’22 and Nimai Talur ’22 – 2nd place tournament finalists
- Jeremy Wang ’23 and Nihaal Konda ’23 – octofinalists (top 16)
In the MBA tournament, at which the 60 top policy debate teams in the country competed against each other, Bellarmine had two teams participate: Akhil Iyengar ‘22 and Ram Gorthi ‘22, as well as Neal Dwivedula ’23 and Rishi Dinesh ’23.
“Big congratulations to Akhil Iyengar ’22 and Ram Gorthi ’22 for breaking to the octofinal elimination round (topi 16) at such a competitive tournament,” noted Langerman. “The new coaches’ poll was released at the beginning of the year, and Akhil and Ram were ranked nationally as the 3rd best team in the country!”
Next for the Bells, a large group of mostly sophomores and juniors will be competing at the MLK Logan tournament, followed by a full weekend of league tournaments the subsequent week.
Congratulations to our Speech and Debate students, as well as their coaches: Aaron Langerman ‘11, DeeDee Sullivan, Vern Cleary, Matt DeLateur ‘12, Xavier Liu ’17, Tyler Vergho ’19, Adarsh Hiremath ’21, and Surya Midha ’21.