The Palo Alto High School debate team will send 11 students to the State Qualifying Tournament on March 16 and 17 at Westmont High School.

At the tournament, there will be five preliminary rounds in debate and three rounds in speech, followed by elimination rounds.  The top scorers will advance to compete in the California State Championship Tournament in San Francisco from March 27 to 29.

The 11 debaters who will compete are Meha Bakshi, Noa Braun, Alex Carter, Esha Datta, Greg Dunn, Nassim Fedel, Raymond Li, Addie McNamara, Juliana Moraes-Liu, Himmat Singh, and Kevin Zhang.

For the first time, the team will have speech squad entries at the tournament. Debate coach Jennie Savage believes junior Evelyn Wang has a good shot at qualifying.

“Evelyn Wang just might be the first Paly student to get to the state championship in a speech event if she continues her 1000 batting average in Dramatic Interpretation,” Savage said.

Savage is optimistic that the team as a whole will perform well at the tournament.

“Every one of our debaters and speech students entered … is good enough to qualify,” Savage said. “I’m confident that the judges will see that in them.”