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Sacramento Bee

Members of Mira Loma High School's speech and debate team didn't come home from the national competition with a title, but it hasn't done much to their spirit.

If anything, it's only invigorated them.

Six team members competed in eight of 16 events at the National Forensic League's competition in Birmingham, Ala., where they competed against about 3,000 speech-and-debaters.

The Bee featured the team and its founding members, brothers Akhilesh and Anish Pathipati, in a story earlier this month. The brothers started the team four years ago with three other people, and it has grown to more than 100 students, the largest and one of the most successful speech-and-debate teams in the Sacramento region.

Akhilesh Pathipati, 17, who graduated from Mira Loma earlier this month and served as the team's president this past school year, made it the furthest in the national competition, beating out more than 450 other students and placing 10th in the extemporaneous commentary event.

Pathipati had just 20 minutes to prepare for a five-minute speech, the topics changing as he advanced through the rounds.

Speech topics included censorship in China, new restrictions on tobacco and even the search for extraterrestrial life.

Competition was fierce, he said.

"This is definitely one of the top accomplishments I've had in these four years," he said.
Team sees progress

Pathipati was prouder still of how well the team did, both throughout the year and at the competition.

"We did better in the sense that we had more people there," he said. "I think this year we definitely saw progress and a successful event."

Neil Forester, the team's coach, said he is happy with the team's performance at the June 14-19 competition, which includes only the "top talent in the country."

"To have them get into that level of competition is pretty impressive," Forester said.

Other area competitors also did well at the national level, including Granite Bay High School's team, which had one of its students reach the semifinal round of the student congress event.

Forester has little doubt that the Mira Loma team will yield a national champion in the future.

"One of these days, one of these years, we're going to get into a final round. I just know it," he said.