A Tale of Two Academic Teams

Chapter 14: In Florence's Shadow No More

Before the faction's supporters arrive, the coach delivers one last speech with his eight players going into the second day.

"Venomous Agendas NGL, especially Sadie, this is your chance to achieve what your predecessors could not. Florence was the greatest Venomous Agenda debater, across all formats, until now. She was good enough a speaker to play at NSDA Nationals, come hell or high water. The biggest difference is the public forum pairing of her time, or Venomous Agendas FR, had only one good speaker. You understand you have big shoes to fill, but just because you have already broken does not mean you should slack off during round four!" The coach then turns to Chantal...

And, more than ever, I feel like I represent the entirety of the quiz bowl-playing world on the debate floor. But, if, despite our best efforts, we don't quite measure up to our performances of yesterday, I might be forced to give up on debating next year. It's not worthwhile to me to keep enduring a compressor if I don't deliver! If I was a quiz bowler like St. Croix Prep's policy player tentatively at the HSNCT, whose PP20TUH for the season is in the teens, I wouldn't feel that pressure, at least not that amount. Their LD quiz bowler is their best quiz bowler, but had a losing record at the Central Minnesota NSDA district qualifier. Yet I am the star player on a team poised to finish in the top-10, or top-20, at the HSNCT, and I must prove I can perform well in both worlds! And they knew pretty much all season about me coaching DCC's PF pair so it's not a big deal to them because they are in a different circuit and they didn't play us at all this season, Sadie monologues internally, while Chantal and the others secretly hope DCC XD won't qualify for the NSDA Nats.

"You're putting way too much pressure on yourself, Sadie. I've known Florence from food drive, she didn't put nearly as much pressure on herself as you do" Chantal comments, shortly before the debate games begin.

"The other big difference between Florence and I is that she wasn't nearly as ambitious as I am" Sadie continues.

"In several ways you're similar to her, and also to Marcia and Imélie to a lesser extent"

"Marcia and Imélie might have felt the pressure of girlhood in quiz bowl, but neither felt the pressure of having to perform in mathletics based on how they perform with a buzzer. They were mathletes and there's far more overlap between quiz bowl and mathletics than debate, so that circuit understands the rigors of mathletics better than they do debate's"

"You're under a sadistic amount of pressure, I can tell"

The faction's fans arrive, with the Congressional players in tow, as well as their families. Which was the cue for the debate players to get ready for their games. Policy's third game is against Southside, LD's games are against players from Benjamin-Franklin and St. Mary's Dominican. But the main draw for the faction is public forum's game against Isidore Newman's top PF pairing. The best PF game I watched this weekend, at least one of them will go to the Nationals; I was watching one game each from our LD players yesterday, Chantal muses while neither team appears to be dominating the debate, and the crossfires appear to entertain the audience more than the speeches in-between. Three minutes of verbal jousting, between pairs of speeches lasting for three or four minutes apiece.

Once the game ends, and the results are posted for both Lincoln-Douglas and public forum shortly thereafter, the four players whose preliminary rounds ended congregate around the tab room (the debate equivalent of the control room in quiz bowl).

"My tournament is over..." Daisy sighs at her 2-2 record.

"Mine too!" the other Venomous Agenda LD player whines, too.

"Our semifinal game is going to be against the Caddo Magnet HF team" Sadie then tells both LD players.

One last game, the most important game of this season. The winner goes to the NSDA Nats, and the loser only has the LHSSL, or Louisiana High School Speech League, championship remaining. Obviously a NSDA Nats berth will look a lot better for college, and this is it for everyone, she muses while the LD players do their homework in a different room. Especially Chantal, for whom the PF players watch the third IX speech round. Maybe watching my teammate should help calm down my nerves before the big game, especially since she talks about unrelated topics.