So I’m pretty bummed out. What was otherwise an excellent weekend for Memorial Forensics, was ruined by the sort of thing that only seems to happen to Brian, or at the very least, me.
In one of the first big tournaments, that ends the first half of the speech season, Memorial placed first in several events (1st-4th in Play Acting, 1st in Oratory, 1st in all three houses, 1st and semi-finalist in ld, 1st in DI, Tied for 1st in Team sweepstakes, and many others). So I was very excited, even though I didn’t look like it……..
I had ran LD all day, and had decided to completely redo-everything I had from rounds 2 on wards, because the preset schedule that I had include three judges with four rounds off, one debater scheduled for two different debates in the second round, and even if one of them was supposed to be a duplicate of a Memorial debater, then in the first two rounds one Memorial debater would have had to negate twice. Not to mention was missing room assignments and listed things in the ridiculous Neg-Aff-Judge order.
But even that couldn’t really depress me, because its an exercise in logic, is detail oriented, and beats the living hell out of judging bad rounds.
And then I found out the results from Vestavia. As Tim would later tell me, Rick Brundage, a highly respected, young debate coach on the national circuit (whom I actually had the pleasure of debating at CFL Nationals in Pittsburgh. He laughed at my X-Files joke. I won the round, but illegitimately), and also Brian’s lab leader from Yale, was the judge that sat on the panel in Brian’s Octo-final round at Vestavia.
When I first called Tim, he said he was as angry as he was when Brian failed to qualify for NFL Nationals last year. Which was pretty angry. Brian made it to the final round and we knew who we were hitting, just not on which side. So, we spent most of the night preparing for both sides of the debate. We did a pretty good job and when the morning came, we thought we had an alright panel. One that included Russ Rueden, a former NFL qualifying debater, who broke at national circuit tournaments, and won the first WDCA LD STOC. Russ, like Rick, sat.
Tim watched the round. I couldn’t because I was supposed to be judging some speech rounds to which I never got assigned. God-forbid a WFCA scholarship winner and NFL qualifier would be capable of judging a round of oratory. Tim was able to predict the exact RFD of Russ’s ballot and that he voted for Brian. The RFD’s on the other ballots made less sense. In fact, one judge’s read, “I agree with the Aff. That claim has no warrant†and was no more specific than that. According to Tim, this was filled out during the 1AR, before Brian ever gave his NR. The other judge had never seen LD debate, never did LD debate, and was some how, qualified to judge the final round of NFL qualifiers. It should also be noted that our district doesn’t like to use a striking/preferencing procedure to alter panels.
The RFD’s for the majority in this case were equally lacking. I don’t know specifics, because Tim was so angry that he didn’t call me. But they went along these lines: Brian’s opponent concedes a complete (cold dropped, no weighing, no nothing) contention and attacks the other but acknowledges that Brian won the standard debate… The case is structured so that the second contention also accesses the standard. From what Tim has said, “I didn’t see the round, but I wanted to argue with the judges just based on their oral.†Makes me question how legitimate that was.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for judge adaptation and the like, I’d just presume that judges have a reciprocal obligation back to the community. In fact, I was very happy that Tim didn’t argue with the judges, despite how he felt about the round. I think that reflects poorly on the maturity of a coach and/or debater, because mistakes and poor decisions happen. It just so happens that mistakes seemingly happen to us. A lot.
And I was reflecting on why these two related incidents made me so depressed. And I came up with several good ones.
The first was obviously that I always presume the national circuit has a better caliber of debate and adjudication than Wisconsin. Part of the reason why we travel, is not just to see new places and different people, but also to get the high level adjudicators and have them review our work. And I guess it just seems odd that something that sounds more plausible to happen in Wisconsin, happened to the Wisconsin Team in Alabama.
The second is of the particular person involved. It’s no secret that I admire Brian’s talents as an academic, as a debater, and as a person. In the hypothetical world, Brian (and Ashtosh too, but he quit) is the reason why I probably am a forensics coach and well as a debate coach at Memorial. If it wasn’t for Tim telling me that I could work with our sophomore policy debaters in doing LD, I probably would have never come on board to also judge and eventually coach individual events. And if I didn’t come on during Memorial’s successful repeat of their sweepstakes championship, I probably might not have become more involved debate. Because, in the first year, Tim did most of the coaching because we only had four students. But in the second year, Tim focused his time on policy (and all of the paper work of a head coach has to attend to), while I focused on LD.
The third is the helpless feeling that I have. From decisions and events like these, which are either a result of strait-up politics or incompetence, I feel completely helpless as a coach. I don’t know what to do, what to say, or how to improve. Specifically, because we didn’t think that we were worse. There’s nothing that I can do, which is why, for as angry as I get, I immediately get depressed. I’m back to respecting the judge, even though, I might disagree with the decision, and I realize that I can’t do anything about the decision.
Now, I know, as I’ve said many times that debate is not all about the wins you receive or anything else like that. It’s about the education, the friendships, and the intellectual stimulation… and all that other good stuff. But it seems that for all the hard work that I help my debaters achieve it seems to contradict our purpose to say that the work did not matter. I just wished others valued this activity as much as me. And I just wished that Brian for once, would get the recognition he deserves, be it at NFL, getting an at large to the TOC, or in WFCA state tournament, because last year wasn’t so good, this years debate season was challenging, and WDCA didn’t go as planned.
