National Points Race

Here, you can find the standings for the 2020-2021 National Points Race, which began with the University of Kentucky Speech and Debate Season Opener on September 12, 2020 and conclude with the NSDA National Tournament on June 18, 2021. Standings will be updated at the end of every month, featuring the tournament news of the month.

While we acknowledge that plenty of extraordinarily talented extempers may not travel frequently, the National Points Race seeks to identify the “best” extemper across a series of widely-recognized tournaments in the United States. Our scoring system heavily values consistency and attendance at major circuit events.

You can find information on the methodology behind the National Points Race here. As this is the first time the Extemper’s Bible is maintaining a competition of this scale, we are open to feedback on ways we can improve our scoring, including the addition or removal of tournaments and/or changes in point values across tiers. Feel free to send us suggestions at steve@extempers.org and james@extempers.org; however, no changes will be made during the 2020-21 season once competition begins.

Unfortunately, for the inaugural season of the National Points Race, there will be no prize given to the winners (other than recognition from your fellow competitors!).

Looking for our past updates? Check out theese links: Our first points race update, our second points race update, our third points race update, our fourth points race update.

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Current Standings:

As the 2020 calendar year draws to a close, Pranav Pattathunaduvil (Plano West, TX) has separated himself from the other competitors by following up his Glenbrooks USX victory with yet another championship at the UT Longhorn Classic online. Just behind him is Peter Alisky (Smoky Hill, CO), who continues his streak of national success this year with a third-place finish at Princeton. Bronx champion Katherine Rollins (Potomac, VA) is in third, just ahead of Krishna Sanaka (Hawken, OH), who jumped from just outside the top ten to fourth place with a victory at the GMU Patriot Games. Rounding out the top five is Katelyn Cai (BASIS Scottsdale, AZ), who, like Pattathunaduvil, had back-to-back strong showings at the Glenbrooks and the University of Texas, where she took first and second, respectively. In sixth is Yale champion McKinley Paltzik (Phoenix Country Day, AZ), who just beats out Princeton champion Ethan Jiang (Seven Lakes, TX). Previously tied for fifth, Gabriel Frank-McPheter (Gabrielino, CA) and Mukta Dharmapurikar (Durham, NC) were both absent from December tournaments and have fallen to eighth. Similarly unmoved is Ananth Veluvali (Edina, MN), who now sits at tenth. Joined by Kush Narang (Bellarmine College Prep, CA) in eleventh and Charles Hou (Plano West, TX), who benefited greatly from a third-place finish at UT, just behind him, the top twelve competitors in the nation have clearly separated themselves from the rest of the field.

Notable movements inside the rest of the Top 25 include sharp rises from Laurel Holley (Riverside, SC) after a second-place GMU finish, Mayin Puri (Ridge, NJ), who finishes at 25th after placing fourth at GMU, and Allen Zhang (A&M Consolidated, TX), who placed third at the Longhorn Classic. Defending NSDA IX champion Angela Wang (Plano West, TX) entered the ring with a championship at UT and currently sits at nineteenth.

The circuit is poised to heat up with a slew of competitive events in January, including the Montgomery Bell Academy Round Robin, the Sunvitational, the James Logan MLK Invitational, the Marshall Speech Spectacular, and the Barkley Forum.

Here are the current Top 25 competitors for the 2020-21 season (last updated after UT, GMU, and Princeton):