Plano ISD students delivered outstanding performances at the 2026 National Speech and Debate Association District Tournament, the qualifying event that determines who will represent the district and the Lone Star region at the NSDA National Championship Tournament in Richmond, Virginia, this summer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Plano West\u00a0Speech and Debate qualified\u00a024 students for the national tournament \u2014 the most from any team in Texas. The Wolfpack also captured multiple district championships, earning first place in Congress Sweepstakes, Debate Sweepstakes\u00a0and the overall Lone Star District Sweepstakes title.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
National Qualifiers<\/p>\n
House Congressional Debate
Jennifer Duan, Qualifier
Anahita Tomar, Qualifier<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Senate Congressional Debate
Ishaan Nirmal, First Alternate<\/p>\n
Big Questions Debate
Navid Sheybani, District Champion and Qualifier
Aashna Bhakkad, Runner-up and Qualifier<\/p>\n
Lincoln Douglas Debate
Angel Ribo, District Champion and Qualifier
Ryan Chang, Runner-up and Qualifier
Skanda Gopikannan, Qualifier
Zayd Mahmud, First Alternate<\/p>\n
Public Forum Debate
Yang Bai and Aayush Appan, District Champions and Qualifiers
Jessica Zhang and Esther Zhou, Runners-up and Qualifiers<\/p>\n
Dramatic Interpretation
Nicole Ebiem, Qualifier<\/p>\n
Duo Interpretation
Catherine Cockrell and Anika Cherukuri, District Runners-up and Qualifiers
Joshua Wu and Sulaiman Ilyas, Qualifiers
Puja Tiramuru and Rania Azizah, First Alternates<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Humorous Interpretation
Victoria Carvalho, Qualifier<\/p>\n
Informative Speaking
Vijay Shivnani, Qualifier<\/p>\n
Original Oratory
Artina Belivan, Qualifier<\/p>\n
International Extemporaneous Speaking
Ryan Xu, Automatic Qualifier (second place at nationals in 2025)
Eric Qian, District Runner-up and Qualifier<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
United States Extemporaneous Speaking
Rehan Buvvaji, District Champion and Qualifier
Mohamed Elrayah, Runner-up and Qualifier
Roshan Shivnani, Qualifier<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Plano Senior Speech and Debate earned first place team sweepstakes honors at Lone Star Districts, capturing four individual championships.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
National Qualifiers<\/p>\n
House Congressional Debate
Zidan Kutub, Second place, Qualified
Lawson Leblanc, Fifth place, Alternate<\/p>\n
Senate Congressional Debate
Dhruv Arun, Fifth place, Alternate<\/p>\n
Dramatic Interpretation
Fatemeh Sohrabpour, Alternate<\/p>\n
Humorous Interpretation
Dharshana Balaji, First place and Champion, Qualified
Dawson Porter, Fifth place, Alternate<\/p>\n
Informative Speaking
Farrah Zein, Second place, Qualified
Annie Chen, Third place, Qualified
Manasvi Geeni, Fifth place, Qualified<\/p>\n
International Extemporaneous Speaking
Lindsey Zhao, First place and Champion, Qualified
Dhruv Arun, Third place, Qualified
Zidan Kutub, Fourth place, Alternate<\/p>\n
Original Oratory
Farrah Zein, First place and Champion, Qualified
Matthew Taylor, Sixth place, Alternate<\/p>\n
Program Oral Interpretation
Matthew Taylor, First place and Champion, Qualified
Ayesha Baishya, Fourth place, Alternate
Dawson Porter, Fifth place, Alternate<\/p>\n
United States Extemporaneous Speaking
Manav Patel, Fifth place, Alternate<\/p>\n
Plano East students proudly represented their campus at the district tournament, and all of the following competitors qualified for the NSDA National Championship.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
National Qualifiers<\/p>\n
House Congressional Debate
Aakash Arulkumaran
Advait Boyanapalli<\/p>\n
Humorous Interpretation
Anshveer Kang
Ajay Hande<\/p>\n
International Extemporaneous Speaking
Samedh Davuluri<\/p>\n
Original Oratory
Jannah Ali<\/p>\n
United States Extemporaneous Speaking
Angelo Ferris
Tarwat Chowdhury<\/p>\n
Big Questions Debate
Noah Rahman
Julia Nash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plano ISD students delivered outstanding performances at the 2026 National Speech and Debate Association District Tournament, the qualifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,2610,161,2609],"class_list":{"0":"post-222575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-plano","9":"tag-plano-headlines","10":"tag-plano-independent-school-district","11":"tag-plano-news","12":"tag-posts-details-default-board-post-page"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}