A Tale of Two Academic Teams

Chapter 11: Columbia Online Invitational

After the holidays, the debate team returns to business, and, galvanized by their strong performance at Isidore Newman (this season there was no need for Sadie to miss the LQBA Winter Invitational South for the INI), decided to try their hand at one last major inter-state debate tournament, prior to NSDA-State, as they always called the NSDA District Qualifiers. Semifinals for PF and policy, one finalist in Congress and Chantal winning extemp, but nothing notable elsewhere. At a practice the Thursday before the tournament...

"It's our first online tournament so please make sure we all have NSDA Campus configured properly. Same goes for all judges, including Florence. Because she plays a two-player version of World Schools for Laval, I had her marked as a World Schools and public forum judge on our judging manifest" the debate coach explains to the team.

"Florence makes me feel... inferior! It seems like, no matter what I do, I don't measure up to her on the debate floor! At this rate I may be forced to stick to quiz bowl in college..." Sadie whines while she still has flashbacks of her losses at Grapevine, notwithstanding that Florence never attended Grapevine.

"Don't worry. Even though Florence is one of the judges we hired for this tournament, she cannot judge any Venomous Agendas public forum games, much less World Schools because we aren't playing it" the coach tries to allay Sadie's fears.

The Venomous Agendas have four judges on their manifest, one for speech, two for debating and one for Congressional, especially since it's the first time the Columbia Online Invitational expanded its field to include all the standard trappings of major inter-state speech and debate tournaments, and it initially was a public forum and Lincoln-Douglas tournament.

"One more thing for everyone: the Columbia Online Invitational is a tournament which has a much larger field than Isidore Newman. In public forum and LD anyway. Several entrants in these two tournaments are already confirmed at ToC, and the field is top-heavy"

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Ouch. A tournament with ToC bids and large fields means multiple state champions playing. Honestly just breaking at a tournament of this kind would be a godsend to me, however, the bulk of this tournament's prestige lies in LD and PF. Hopefully spending all the holidays working on doing research for the January resolution would bear fruit, she muses, while she gets one last practice with DCC until the tournament.

"Good luck, even though you play only two tournaments for the rest of the season" Joe starts speaking.

"Yeah, NCFL-State is this weekend and we need to rework our speeches" David comments. "We will attend NSDA-State only if we lose NCFL-State"

"Wait a minute: is DCFL-PF the same as NCFL-State?" Sadie asks, while she remembers about how DCFL-PF was one of the two winter tournaments DCC planned on attending.

"Yes, because the DCFL basically represents Michigan's entire Catholic debate circuit. Since NCFL districts can arrange their respective qualifiers however they want, for us this means LD and PF for debate, held two weeks apart, and speech happens in late March" Francis explains to them.

"We will attend NSDA-State only if we lose NCFL-State" David relays DCC's head coach's decision.

"Venomous Agendas NGL" made us feel, last time we had a practice round against them, as if they had a serious chance of winning their NSDA-State. Or Michigan's, really. Fingers crossed and pray to God that we get lucky and we can win either tournament! David muses, not sure about how the NCFL, or National Catholic Forensics League, feel vs the NSDA.

Speaking of practice round, the Shamrock players wait until they make the adjustments they feel are necessary to their opening statements before they can think of starting it. They were always told that writing one is much like writing an essay.