Awards and Announcements

Congratulations to Phillip Walker for winning Best in Show last night at the Hughston Foundation Art Gala.  We have several wonderful entries form the other students pictured as well. Very proud of these students!

Columbus High competed at Warner Robins HS with 67 members of the speech and debate program. We are pleased to share that the team earned 14 qualifying bids to the Varsity State Championship among numerous other awards – and the collective efforts of all 67 students resulted in our Overall Sweepstakes award for best-performing team in all events. (This is our second overall sweepstakes award of the season.)

Individual students who earned awards and recognition are listed below, as well as a group picture. Students who qualified to the State Championship are marked with an *.

Program Oral Interpretation  –  2^nd Place – Saphira Etienne

Original Oratory  –  1^st Place – Nadia Jenkins*,  3^rd Place – Neha Nakirikanti* and 

5^th Place – Uchechi Onukwue*

Informative Speaking  –  2^nd Place – Raga Yarlagadda*,  4^th Place – Uchechi Onukwue

Impromptu Speaking

1^st Place – Nadia Jenkins* –  Nadia swept the event, earning the top rank in each of her four preliminary rounds. Impromptu was the largest speaking event at the tournament, and Nadia ranked first out of nearly 40 students.

 

Extemporaneous Speaking –  5^th Place – Sydney Godwin*

Dramatic Interpretation –  3^rd Place – HoneyRose Smith

Varsity Public Forum

1^st Place Champion (undefeated) – Noor Abdallah*/Jaewon Lee*

3^rd Place Tie – Owen Anderson*/Jonathan Marto* and John Cady*/Yuchan Cho*

5^th Place Tie – Nandini Shukla/Sarika Rahman and Vinh Legros/Ajay Pathakamuri

1^st Place Individual Speaker – Noor Abdallah

2^nd Place Individual Speaker – Sarika Rahman

3^rd Place Individual Speaker – Yuchan Cho

8^th Place Individual Speaker – Jonathan Marto

9^th Place Individual Speaker – Jordyn Howard

Novice Public Forum

We had three teams finish as Quarterfinalists (Tied for 5^th Place):

Kunal Ansingkar/Kaya Basnet, Michael Marola/Noah Yoon, Ruthvij Reddi/Daniel So

3^rd Place Individual Speaker – Daniel So

4^th Place Individual Speaker – Kaya Basnet

9^th Place Individual Speaker – Nila Karunakaran

10^th Place Individual Speaker – Justin Lee

 

Varsity Lincoln Douglas

Co-Champion: Katelynn Harp*

3^rd Place Overall: Eva Cheraisi*

1^st Place Individual Speaker – Katelynn Harp

4^th Place Individual Speaker – Eva Cheraisi

 

Novice Lincoln Douglas

We are SO proud of our Novice Lincoln Douglas debaters. At the end of the tournament, we had FOUR undefeated students in an unbreakable tie to CO-CHAMPION the event. In fact, the top 6 competitors were all from CHS!

Co-Champion: Kelly Tran

Co-Champion: Emma McClure

Co-Champion: Charlotte Young

Co-Champion: Jennie Lee

5^th Place: Anika Sridhar

6^th Place: Sampan Bhattacharyya

1^st Place Individual Speaker: Kelly Tran

2^nd Place Individual Speaker: Anika Sridhar

5^th Place Individual Speaker: Emma McClure

6^th Place Individual Speaker: Charlotte Young

7^th Place Individual Speaker: Jennie Lee

 

Please join me in congratulating the CHS math team for varsity’s 1^st place and JV’s 3^rd place win for the southern division of Luella High School’s math tournament on Saturday. Individual winners are listed on the picture below, and we had a clean sweep for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place top scorers (Sohan Shankar, Sean Aoki, and Aryan Patel, respectively). 

 

Dylan Jarvis

Andrew and Peter Jung 

Elvin Ebby

Nayeeb Mohammed

Sun and Jin Lee

30 of our newest speech & debate team members plus 10 of our veteran competitors traveled to Birmingham to compete in the Vestavia Hills HS Novice Tournament, reserved for students competing in their first year in a given event type (speech or debate). Our varsity students served as peer mentors and student judges at this event to help their younger teammates grow and develop as competitors. We’re pleased to report that our students placed in every event we entered, with the following students earning individual recognition and honors at the tournament:

 

Lincoln Douglas Debate

Cassidy Fine – 2^nd Place Individual Speaker (Cassidy decided to learn debate last week…on Thursday…two days before the tournament…so this is an exceptional achievement.)

Sara MacGibbon – 10^th Place Individual Speaker

 

Public Forum Debate

Ruthvij Reddi & Daniel So – 8^th Place Overall

Kaya Basnet – 1^st Place Individual Speaker. Kaya ranked first out of 140 individual students!

 

Dramatic Interpretation

4^th Place – Lauren Baker

5^th Place – Lexi Sherrer

6^th Place – HoneyRose Smith

 

Extemporaneous Speaking

2^nd Place – Ayaan Sharma

4^th Place – Emma Schweizer

6^th Place – Nila Karunakaran

10^th Place – May Birch

 

Impromptu Speaking

7^th Place – Ayaan Sharma

8^th Place – Lexi Sherrer

 

Original Oratory

9^th Place – Debra Jones

 

Program Oral Interpretation

4^th – Saphira Etienne