With a breath of anticipation, he delicately peels back the thick layers of bubble wrap, revealing a small, plastic trophy. Most Talented. His phone explodes with text messages, laughing at the ironic trophy following his 8th grade superlative for Most Talented. Fast forward four years, the laughter turned into roaring applause as senior Shivraj Singh clinched his first place trophy in Humorous Interpretation at Yale University’s  31st Annual Invitational.

Shivraj’s journey to success began in freshman year as a young 14 year old still navigating the world of public speaking. “I had an interest in public speaking because I wasn’t too good at it and wanted to get better,” he says. Congressional Debate thrust him into a whole new world—one filled with intense research and argumentation. Shivraj had a goal of being a great public speaker, and two years of congressional debate did exactly that. Yet, something was missing. “Ms. Schwab and I sat down and talked about how I’m liking the public speaking and performance aspect, but not the debate components. She suggested I should go into speech, so then I started speech,” he explains. And two years later, Shivraj found himself standing on the steps of Yale University alongside competitors with twice the experience.

Yale’s Annual Invitational is known as a very difficult tournament because of how early in the season it is. With only a few months to prepare, having a piece ready is difficult.  “A big thing that I was trying to impress the judges with is cleanliness, a term in Humorous Interpretation. It’s just how clean your movements are in the piece. How natural do you seem when you’re performing? That’s what I was trying to go for.” Through his junior and senior year,  Shivraj has competed in the Humorous Interpretation category—an event where you take a satirical script and interpret it into a comedic or meaningful way, performed under a ten minute constraint. And only after a few months, Shivraj stood on the steps of the Yale campus. “During the final round, there were six of us. Some of the other finalists had been doing Humorous Interpretation since middle school, while this was just my second year. Also, out of the six people, most went to schools with at least 20 people present at the tournament. I was the only one there from Pines Charter.” And after a few days, he stood on stage as one of the top three competitors, brimming with anticipation to find out which place he finished at. He wasn’t third. Or second. And at that moment, Shivraj realized he won first place at Yale’s 31st Invitational, a groundbreaking event for Charter’s speech team. “It was so nice when the six people are on the stage, and they’re calling off people and announce you as champion—you hear them say ‘from Pembroke Pines Charter High School,” he explains.

As a team captain this year, Shivraj has been a trailblazer, earning many victories for Pines Charter’s debate team. Just less than a month after his victory at Yale, he brought another trophy in for PPCHS as the University of Florida champion. And undoubtedly, there will be many more who follow his footsteps. “The only reason why I was able to work so hard is because I found a piece that was genuinely meaningful to me and something I really believed in. Whenever I felt  tired or exhausted working on my piece, I always thought about how strongly I believe in this message. Being able to share that across the nation was something I really wanted to do and it pushed me forward.” So, as Shivraj prepares to finally make his exit and graduate from high school, he wants to leave incoming competitors with a final piece of advice. “If you’re interested in speech, finding your voice and what you’re passionate about will be your greatest motivation.”