Media Release    

Mangalore, Sep 2: Vaishnavi Pavithran (16-year-old) and Vaibhav D’Souza (17-year-old), students of St Aloysius PU College, here were declared the winners of the highly competitive Verbattle Seniors – 13 held recently in Bangalore.

Being in the senior category, they turned out to be one of the youngest teams among teams ranging from 16 years to 24 years of age. They did not consider being young a setback but instead used their vibrant energy and charisma to bag the first place honors for Mangalore.

Here is a small peep into their journey. It all began on August 6 at the zonal level selection held in Don Bosco Hall, here. Along with ten other teams, they were selected to go to Bangalore for the next round. On August 21, they had their next debate against the best 36 of the state. They topped the round with the highest marks and even got a standing ovation from the crowd and judges for their fantastic debate against the statement, ‘bad language is okay’. They faced the top 18 of the state the next day and again emerged as the highest scorers when they debated for the statement, ‘People should be recognized by their personality and not by their gender.’

Ultimately they were down to the best nine teams of the state. The first rounds of the finals were against two of the most prestigious colleges of Mangalore – one being the winners of Verbattle Junior last year. They were against the statement ‘Socialists are better than capitalists.’

 Qualifying that round with grace, they made it to the top three of the state and finally after an intense debate regarding three statements, ‘Valentine’s day is a business’, ‘Intellectual property copy rights must be compulsorily replaced by copy lefts’ and ‘A good dictator is better than a bad democracy’, they emerged as the youngest ever winners of Verbattle Senior.
                           
When asked their secret for success, they mentioned that it is teamwork that made it possible. “We worked on covering each other’s weaknesses and projecting our strengths. Even for a split second we never thought about individual glory. We wanted victory as a team and we worked towards it. Their equation for success was simple “VAI [BHAV SHNAVI] "= VICTORY! We believe that what made us work as a team is the fact that we were always grateful for having each other because the chemistry between them worked very well. They added saying "We don’t think it would have been possible had someone else been our partner.”

“Moreover, we are grateful to St Aloysius PU College for encouraging us so much, Geeta Nambiar Ma’am for selecting us, our parents for having faith in us and Sujith Sir for his constant encouragement. Sujith Sir pushed us when we were nervous, held our hand when we missed our family and most of all guided us throughout our journey. We also thank John Mathias and Fly for their never ending support and corporation towards us in Bangalore. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would actually win Verbattle and we are grateful to each and everyone who supported us throughout our endeavor,” they said.