FRIDAY APRIL 21 — Beverly’s Speech and Debate team went to the state championship in Carlsbad in San Diego County at Carlsbad High School this past weekend. This comes after they qualified in the top 60 for public forum debaters in the state at WBFL quals.

 In attendance were public forum debate pairs of students Edward Park (11) and Ruby Matenko (10), and sophomores Golsa Sadrieh (10) and Justin Greenberg (10), along with one student competing in speech, Deborah Nosrati (11).

“Carlsbad was so much fun,” Sadrieh said. “There were around 1,200 kids at the event. It was really cool to be surrounded by all these kids that are also into the same stuff that we are. And it was cool meeting all the competitors. And something that I like about debate is getting to know new people.”

Carlsbad High School was very accommodating, allowing students to use the library to work on their cases in between rounds and opening up their classrooms for the rounds. Food trucks were in the courtyard, since most students were spending most of their weekend at the high school and needed to refuel between rounds.

While Beverly’s debaters did not advance to the octo-finals on Sunday Apr. 23, they held their own against the other competing high schoolers.

“I think that my biggest takeaway was that for next year, we should probably practice more on the topic beforehand,” Sadrieh said, “but I was personally satisfied with our results, especially since we put a lot of hours at the tournament going to the library there, working on our cases, doing rounds with each other. I think we did good.”