A strong contingent of 149 extempers from across the West Coast, Texas, and Louisiana attended this year’s California Invitational, hosted by the University of California-Berkeley. The tournament was the culmination of the National Points Race West Coast swing and counted as a third tier tournament.
Ali Malik of Monta Vista High School (CA) was making his second National Points Race final round appearance of the season and won by a comfortable nine-rank margin over Lexie Toshav of Isidore Newman School (LA). Toshav was the only non-Californian in the final round.
The tournament was tabulated from prelims to finals, a quirk that did not affect the final tabulation of the tournament as the top six finished as they placed in the last round. Malik won the final by four ranks, winning three of the five available first place ranks. He is the first Monta Vista extemper to win the California Invitational according to our records of the tournament, which go back to 2004.
#24 Andrew Zheng of Acalanes High School (CA) wrapped up a successful West Coast swing with a third place finish. In recent months Zheng notched a runner-up finish at the James Logan MLK Invitational in United States Extemp and a semi-finalist performance at Stanford. Zheng was one cumulative rank behind Toshav and two clear of Samuel Ma of Bellarmine College Preparatory (CA).
Ravi Bhat of Carlsbad High School (CA) made his second National Points Race final round of the season too, finishing in fifth place. In January, Bhat finished sixth in International Extemp at the MLK.
Sixth place in the crowded tournament went to Robert Fields of the Harker School (CA).
#12 Maximilian Guo of BASIS Silicon Valley had his hopes of two West Coast victories dashed in semi-finals. The quarter-finals was the end of the line of other ranked competitors in the field like #20 Abhijay Rana of Bellarmine and #25 Ellie Sohn of Flintridge Preparatory School (CA).
Defending champion Austin Bauman of Bellarmine made it to quarter-finals before he was eliminated.
Since the California Invitational was a third tier tournament, all of the extempers who reached the quarter-final round will earn points for the 2024-2025 National Points Race. As the champion, Malik earned 100 points.
Here are the results of the 2024 California Invitational (Click here for tab sheet):