By Rick Vacek | May 12, 2025
As she prepared for the banner to unfold and reveal the quarterfinalists, Sneha Elangovan braced herself.
“It was a very surreal moment,” said The University of Texas at Dallas senior.
Still fresh in her mind, all too real, were her first two trips to the American Forensic Association (AFA) National Speech Tournament. When she and her teammates didn’t see their names on those lists, they returned to their hotel wondering what it would take to break through that banner barrier.
And she hadn’t forgotten the humble beginnings of her speech career, how she cried when her friends walked away with trophies and she left empty-handed after her first major high school tournament.
But this time it would be different. Elangovan’s name wasn’t just on one banner, it was on two – for both persuasive and extemporaneous speaking.
She and freshman teammate Tyler Crivella thus became the first Comet Speech and Forensics competitors to ever make the top-24 elimination round in a category at the biggest college speech event in the U.S.
This time, the tears were joyful.
“When I saw my name up there, I started crying,” she said. “It’s a culmination of the last four years. I was always really scared to go against these really, really good people who are winning nationals all the time. But I was able to see and learn from them.
“Being able to go to these very cutthroat, high-end competitions helped me improve my skills, even if it was subconsciously.”
But the achievements didn’t stop there.
Elangovan was one of only 12 people to be named to the All-American Speech Team, and her leadership as the UT Dallas captain helped Crivella and Kenny Lin compete successfully, too.
Crivella, set to be the captain in 2025-26, also made the extemporaneous quarterfinals, and Lin, new to the team this year, accomplished a lot just by qualifying for the national tournament.
It was a banner ending to Elangovan’s four eventful years.
“I have grown so much,” she said.
Elangovan has bloomed right along with the 7-year-old Comet Speech and Forensics program, but her dedication has remained consistent and grounded.
“It was cool to see that it means as much to people as it means to me,” she said. “A lot of these tournaments, we’re there to compete, we’re there to win, but it’s also about the community.
“A big part of being captain was forming that community and making everyone feel safe and welcome. It makes me really happy that people made friends that they’ll probably talk to for the rest of their college career and hopefully afterward, too.”
Dr. John Gooch, the team’s lead coach, loves to hear that.
“I know we’re doing a very individualistic thing, but there still is a team component. For her to say that thrills me to no end,” he said. “I think that very much goes to who she is as a person. She was always thinking, ‘How can we help people get better? How can we as a team succeed at these tournaments?’”
To reach that goal, Elangovan took the initiative to conduct workshops that were especially helpful for a group of students who joined the team in February. She explained to them what each event is and how to prepare.
“I was doing it on my own,” she said. “We had done practices, but we weren’t a workshop-heavy organization. I just took all of my knowledge and tried to pass it on to those who are staying. Hopefully that will carry on.”
But Elangovan also needed time to connect with her own speeches, one of which had particular meaning to her.
The computer science and pre-med major wants to become an obstetrician/gynecologist (OB/GYN), and her speech for the persuasive competition was about maternity care deserts.
She learned that about 30% of all counties in the U.S. don’t have any access to maternal care, and people in those areas often have to travel at least an hour just to see an OB/GYN. Getting accepted into the osteopathic program at Kansas City University is her first step toward trying to solve that issue.
“At the beginning of the semester, I was rushing to write these speeches, and I didn’t have much time to sit with them,” she said. “But the more I practiced and the more I wrote speeches, the more I connected with them.”
Reaching the quarterfinals for extemporaneous speaking, in which competitors are given a topic and have only 30 minutes to research it and prepare a seven-minute talk, was even more impressive because it’s not her specialty.
It was yet one more indicator of the growth that marked Elangovan’s work in the program.
“Going from a solid, good high school competitor to a really remarkable college competitor … that’s saying something,” Gooch said.
Those banners had the final say.