T-Mac # 2
This is as much a story about an entire season as it is about one round. When I took the Assistant Director of Forensics job at Pacific University, I was pretty sure I knew what I was getting in to. In the northwest, Pacific is known for having really solid individual events and very streaky debaters. However, a year ago, as I was getting to know the debaters, I knew we had a lot of work ahead of us—more than I had anticipated.
With few exceptions, the debaters were really young. Half of them were freshman and the other half were sophomores--bitter, resentful sophomores. It’s been my experience that when someone loses for a long time, they tend to shift the blame away from themselves whenever possible, and that’s what my more experienced students were doing. Tiffanie and Jared, the two returning students, blamed evil speed, topicality and K’s for their many losses, claiming that if people debated the way parli was really intended, that they would do much better. But, like most people who make those arguments, they weren’t really mad at the structure of debate or the direction it was going, but just at the fact that they were losing and didn’t know how to fix it.
So, we started with the basics. I taught them the structure to arguments, the difference between offense and defense, how to answer a K, how to handle speed, anything and everything I knew they needed to know to do well. Still, it was slow going. We were working without a net—the season was in full swing, so in spite of my weekly meetings with each team, I often only discovered something needed improvement until their ballots told me so. At the first tournament, our teams were a lucky 3-3, 2-4 and 1-5, a trend that would continue for the rest of the semester.
Over winter break, although no one said it out loud, everyone was wondering the same thing—if we all wouldn’t be better off scrapping parli altogether and just focusing on individual events. Two of the six debaters had already done that, and the other four were probably considering if it wouldn’t be a better use of their time and resources to forget about debate and just cut more extemp articles every week. In the end, though, none of us were willing to walk away from debate—we loved it too much, and besides, there were small signs of progress that gave our teams hope.
As the spring term began, we had a team meeting and decided that instead of quitting, that we would try even harder to improve. I made them flashcards with the structure to positions, we had two weekly meetings and practiced in each, they researched cases and talked about the news together, and slowly, they started to get better. Jared and Tyler were an encouraging 3-3 at Point Loma and Willamette, the toughest tournaments we had been to all year, and when they went 5-1 at Oregon State, I knew they were peaking at the right time. Josh and Kyle were coming along, too. Going in to NPDA, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t embarrass ourselves, which was a big step up from where we were only a few months before.
After seven rounds, Josh and Kyle were 3-4 and out of the tournament, Jared and Tyler were 4-3 and had a chance to break, and I was going absolutely crazy. Coaching is much more nerve racking that debating for me, only because I ultimately have zero control over what happens in the round, and no matter how badly I want to help my kids, I’m ultimately powerless—it’s up to them.
When the topic came out, I got my shit together long enough to green light Josh and Kyle’s irony position. They just wanted to have fun, so I figured that letting them run a hilarious irony K was the least I could do for all their hard work. The rest of prep was as blur—walking to the round I was going to judge, I kept thinking of really good arguments that we should have prepped answers for, and Jared and Tyler had their phones off so I couldn’t warn them. By the time I had turned in my ballot, I was convinced they had lost.
What happened next was something I’ll never forget. I walked up stairs and saw Jared and Tyler standing next to each other, expressionless. I looked at them for a few seconds, and Jared smiled. I knew—they won, and were going to break. This team that didn’t know what a counterplan was six months before, that argued with me for weeks on end about why topicality is occasionally a good thing, that couldn’t structure a disad to save their life, this team—was going to break at a national tournament. Without saying a word, I gave them both a big, long hug. I was more proud of them than I’ve ever been of anyone, and it felt as good as anything I accomplished as a competitor.
Although we wouldn’t find out for a few hours, Josh and Kyle had won round eight too, ending up at a respectable 4-4. Despite dropping on a 2-1 in quads, I was still very happy to have coached Jared and Tyler.
However, with me leaving, Jared studying abroad and without any debate coach, next year promises to be a tough one for my debaters. I just hope that if they’re struggling at some point, they make the choice, like we all did over winter break, to work that much harder and never give up.
With few exceptions, the debaters were really young. Half of them were freshman and the other half were sophomores--bitter, resentful sophomores. It’s been my experience that when someone loses for a long time, they tend to shift the blame away from themselves whenever possible, and that’s what my more experienced students were doing. Tiffanie and Jared, the two returning students, blamed evil speed, topicality and K’s for their many losses, claiming that if people debated the way parli was really intended, that they would do much better. But, like most people who make those arguments, they weren’t really mad at the structure of debate or the direction it was going, but just at the fact that they were losing and didn’t know how to fix it.
So, we started with the basics. I taught them the structure to arguments, the difference between offense and defense, how to answer a K, how to handle speed, anything and everything I knew they needed to know to do well. Still, it was slow going. We were working without a net—the season was in full swing, so in spite of my weekly meetings with each team, I often only discovered something needed improvement until their ballots told me so. At the first tournament, our teams were a lucky 3-3, 2-4 and 1-5, a trend that would continue for the rest of the semester.
Over winter break, although no one said it out loud, everyone was wondering the same thing—if we all wouldn’t be better off scrapping parli altogether and just focusing on individual events. Two of the six debaters had already done that, and the other four were probably considering if it wouldn’t be a better use of their time and resources to forget about debate and just cut more extemp articles every week. In the end, though, none of us were willing to walk away from debate—we loved it too much, and besides, there were small signs of progress that gave our teams hope.
As the spring term began, we had a team meeting and decided that instead of quitting, that we would try even harder to improve. I made them flashcards with the structure to positions, we had two weekly meetings and practiced in each, they researched cases and talked about the news together, and slowly, they started to get better. Jared and Tyler were an encouraging 3-3 at Point Loma and Willamette, the toughest tournaments we had been to all year, and when they went 5-1 at Oregon State, I knew they were peaking at the right time. Josh and Kyle were coming along, too. Going in to NPDA, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t embarrass ourselves, which was a big step up from where we were only a few months before.
After seven rounds, Josh and Kyle were 3-4 and out of the tournament, Jared and Tyler were 4-3 and had a chance to break, and I was going absolutely crazy. Coaching is much more nerve racking that debating for me, only because I ultimately have zero control over what happens in the round, and no matter how badly I want to help my kids, I’m ultimately powerless—it’s up to them.
When the topic came out, I got my shit together long enough to green light Josh and Kyle’s irony position. They just wanted to have fun, so I figured that letting them run a hilarious irony K was the least I could do for all their hard work. The rest of prep was as blur—walking to the round I was going to judge, I kept thinking of really good arguments that we should have prepped answers for, and Jared and Tyler had their phones off so I couldn’t warn them. By the time I had turned in my ballot, I was convinced they had lost.
What happened next was something I’ll never forget. I walked up stairs and saw Jared and Tyler standing next to each other, expressionless. I looked at them for a few seconds, and Jared smiled. I knew—they won, and were going to break. This team that didn’t know what a counterplan was six months before, that argued with me for weeks on end about why topicality is occasionally a good thing, that couldn’t structure a disad to save their life, this team—was going to break at a national tournament. Without saying a word, I gave them both a big, long hug. I was more proud of them than I’ve ever been of anyone, and it felt as good as anything I accomplished as a competitor.
Although we wouldn’t find out for a few hours, Josh and Kyle had won round eight too, ending up at a respectable 4-4. Despite dropping on a 2-1 in quads, I was still very happy to have coached Jared and Tyler.
However, with me leaving, Jared studying abroad and without any debate coach, next year promises to be a tough one for my debaters. I just hope that if they’re struggling at some point, they make the choice, like we all did over winter break, to work that much harder and never give up.
posted by T-Mac at 2:18 PM
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