Senior Anna Fehr arrived at her house, exhausted from a full day of grueling competition. She collapsed onto her bed with a sigh, arms flung out wide, face buried in her pillow. Ding. A text from her teammate lit up her phone. She qualified for the next round of competition—State. In shock, she stares blankly at the message.

“[Sophomore Rohan Marangoly] sent me a picture of the trophy, and I was like, ‘Wow’,” Fehr said. “I was really excited.”

Sophomore Anthony Wong said that the debate team went to the Golden Gate Speech Association annual state qualifier tournament, where teams can move on to State if they place well. Wong was partnered with Fehr for a type of debate called parliamentary style, and the pair placed fourth out of 47 teams.

“[Fehr] and I placed in the top five teams, which means we are able to automatically go to State without going to the elimination round,” Wong said.

Fehr said that the debate team has not sent anyone to the qualifying meet with the intent that they would move on to the state competition. This year, three teams from Piedmont placed well at qualifiers, and Fehr and Wong will be the first team to go to the state competition from Piedmont.

“We have everyone from freshman to seniors competing, and the seniors, as well as a couple of sophomores, did extremely well at state qualifiers this year, which actually placed us third in our entire league,” said debate president and senior Sam Orta.

Orta said that the debate team broke every PHS debate record this year, including sending the most people to a competition, sending the most people to state qualifiers, and having the most students qualify for the state tournament.

“In the past five years, Piedmont debate hasn’t been very competitive,” Fehr said. “We usually do well at the tournaments we go to, but we don’t put a lot of time into it.”

Fehr said that some teams have professional coaches and will power match with teams in order to compete well at tournaments, but Piedmont does not do that.

“We try to make sure everyone, including the kids who are the newest on the team, will get stronger over time, so we have a lot of lesson plans centered around making sure they end up better for next year,” Orta said.

Orta said that he is very proud of the team since it is unusual for such a small team to end up finishing so well.

“We put a lot of hard work into it, so it’s very rewarding to get these results in the end,” Wong said.