Venomous Agenda Memoirs

Chapter 19: No More Flying Under the Radar

In the months to follow, the results follow one after the other, especially for quiz bowl and mathletics fans: first quiz bowl wins at Tal Atkins but it ultimately proved Cristiano's best tournament all season: he was demoted to the B-team after the VAs finish fourth at the LQBA Fall Invitational South.

Then came the fall Math Madness, which, by now became the subject of butt jokes about the VAs choking year in, year out, losing in the semifinal despite selling out the stadium for all 5 playoff games. As per usual, the VAs make it to the VMC final, even with Nicole who, like Faith, narrowly qualified for the AIME... and all 4 core veterans handily qualify for it.

Finally, debate: they win a string of local tournaments like Teurlings Catholic and JPG, and have strong performances in inter-state tournaments, such as Congress and intl extemp at Grapevine and extemp (which Chantal won), policy as well as public forum at Isidore Newman.

After Isidore Newman, however, the debate coach made Glen weigh the decision of whether to send Chantal to Lexington for the Tournament of Champions or to hold out for NSDA-State and hope Sadie's pair can also win because, unless the VAs go deep in the spring Math Madness, they can't afford to attend both the ToC and NSDA Nats.

Before classes begin, Glen quickly reviews the results from the Columbia Online Invitational, which is the last inter-state tournament the VAs would enter for the regular season.

On Monday, the morning announcement goes into greater detail about the fields than previous Monday morning announcements regarding debate tournaments.

"This weekend, our Venomous Agendas participated in the Columbia Invitational, with our Congressional players placing twentieth and twenty-fifth, out of a field of seventy-eight, extemp and original oratory being eliminated in the prelims..." the principal announces.

Several of Chantal's classmates gasp upon hearing about how Chantal could lose such a tournament when she accustomed them to strong performances for the first half of the season.

"Lincoln-Douglas finished three-three. And our two strongest-performing teams are policy, eighth out of a field of forty teams from eleven states, and public forum, twentieth out of a field of one hundred and fifty-eight teams among the best in the nation, from twenty-three states! More than ever, debate can dream, and dream big!" the principal finishes the announcement.

"Eighth for policy, twentieth for public forum, what's the meaning of this?" a dazed classmate of Chantal asks her.

"It's probably new this year at Columbia Invitational, but they rank teams first by round and then by the composite speaker scores" Chantal answers.

Chantal, finishing thirteenth in extemp at Columbia? This is completely unlike her! That's not the Chantal on whom we school personnel pinned the debate team's hopes before she enrolled here in the first place! The Chantal as of this season's Isidore Newman was probably more like it, Glen realizes there's something fishy with Chantal. Especially since Chantal captained the debate team for this season right after Grapevine and, because of this poor (by her standards) showing at Columbia, lost captaincy after that tournament.

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When Valerie invites Faith to the family home that night, the two of them are in Valerie's bedroom...

"Thank God we don't have to worry about the VMC, we can focus fully on the AIME and hence the spring Math Madness. However, because some of our best players are also competing at the VMC, don't expect us to perform as well as we did in Fall" Valerie explains the situation to her teammate.

"There's a question I don't understand. It appeared in a past game we played this season, and I got it wrong then" Faith then shows her teammate the question.