Kids & Family

Patch Whiz Kid of the Week—Akanksha Jain

Know an outstanding youth, sports team, school club or any accomplished young citizen who is deserving of this mini-profile honor? Send you nominations to sheila.sanchez@patch.com.

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Akanksha Jain

Schools: Ninth-grader at Irvington High School in Fremont and attends Young Genius Educational Center in Saratoga and Los Gatos.


Accomplishments:

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  • Fifth place and quarter-finalist at the 2013 Voices Foundation Lincoln Douglas Debate Invitational & Round Robin Tournament at Presentation High School in October of 2013.
  • Won Silver Presidential Academic Award in eighth-grade at Horner Junior High School.
  • Academically outstanding student since elementary school
  • Always on the Honor Roll and qualified for honors classes
  • GATE qualified
  • Second place at South Bay Debate League Tournament as well as Top Speaker Award (2013)
  • Fourth place at the South Bay Debate League Nationals Qualifier Tournament (2013)
  • Placed in the top 20 teams at the Northern California (NorCal) Cup Debate Tournament (2013)
  • Designed Horner Junior High School 2013 yearbook and wrote leading articles for the newspaper as part of the Publications team (for newspaper and yearbook) in eighth grade
  • Member of Stanford University’s Education Program for the Gifted Youth, or EPGY.
  • Participated in the United States Open Music Competition for piano (February, 2013)
  • Participant of MSJA Drillmasters Swim program, finished Station 9 and qualified to be on the swim team
  • Fluent in Hindi as second language, has been learning Hindi for six years at JCNC, Milpitas
  • Part of the Irvington High School Speech Team
  • Part of Young Genius Speech & Debate Team

Key to Awesomeness:

Akanksha discovered her passion for public speaking in early childhood. She has taken her passion to the next level by participating in various debate and speech tournaments since she joined Horner Junior High School’s debate team in seventh grade, according to Young Genius Educational Center owner Helen Heinsohn.

She is now part of Young Genius Speech and Debate Academy’s high school debate team and Irvington High School speech team.

Don Heinsohn, director of the Young Genius Speech and Debate program, said although Akanksha joined the Young Genius Lincoln Douglas Team only a few months ago, she won a fifth-place award at the Voices Tournament, making it to the quater-finals.

Besides debate, Akanksha likes writing. She was part of her middle school’s newspaper and yearbook team. She designed multiple pages in the yearbook and wrote leading articles for the school newspaper, Heinsohn said.

Akanksha loves swimming and recently participated in MSJA Drill master training.

She also likes to play the piano.


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