Last weekend James Logan High School in Union City, California hosted its MLK Invitational, the first West Coast tournament in this year’s National Points Race. The tournament usually features a vast array of California competitors with a few out of state extempers sprinkled in and this year one of those extempers, Nikolas Kirk of Brophy College Preparatory (AZ), captured its international extemp championship. Kirk defeated Rubin Roy of Monte Vista High School (CA) by two cumulative ranks, a margin helped by Kirk’s five rank victory in the final round. Nicholas Panyanouvong of James Enochs High School (CA) placed third.
Kirk’s victory was his second at a National Points Race event this season as he was credited with a victory for being the best overall extemper at the University of Texas Longhorn Classic last month. That makes he and Kay Rollins of the Potomac School (VA) as the only extempers with more than one National Points Race victory in 2018-2019. Kirk earned forty points for winning the MLK, moving him into fifth place in the National Points Race.
In the United States Extemp portion of the tournament, Roy triumphed over teammate Arham Habib, who was a semi-finalist at the Glenbrooks in November, by one rank despite losing the final round by six ranks. Habib won the final round with two first place ranks but an errant fourth place rank put him one behind Roy when the cumulative ranks were tallied. Arshia Mehta of Dougherty Valley High School (CA) was the third place finisher.
The top six finishers in each extemp category earned National Points Race points and Roy was credited with a victory in USX, giving him his first points of the season. However, he will not receive points from the IX portion of the tournament to prevent double counting in the standings.
Here are the results of the 2019 James Logan MLK Invitational (Click here for tab sheet):