The news from Avignon

For the Northeast Championships we conducted 3 divisions of LD, 1 division of Pffft and 2 divisions of Policy. JV, O’C and I manned the machinery while Kaz supervised the conduct of the overall event, including housing and foodstuffs. All told I guess we had a couple of hundred people, and it went quite well, especially considering the tight judging pools. In policy, the number of varsity judges = the need for varsity judges, so no one got to take a nap in the judges’ lounge while waiting for the shrimp to defrost (hint: put in microwave for 10 seconds, which is what I did). In LD, we had a rather sterling assemblage of judging talent, since O’C had done a good job of beating the bushes, and if you look at some of the panels you’d think that we were conducting TOCs in practically every division. We had promised that all 4-2s would break. Given the sizes of the fields and number of judges, in varsity and JV we ended up breaking everyone who could have been 4-2, which after five rounds is arguably better since it breaks more people, and going the full six rounds in the easier-to-find-judges-for novice division (since non-debating varsity were ok to judge this division). We broke to a variety of partial thises and thats, then ran out of the building for a nice lunch with la Coin, given that she had driven up from the wilds of her new (sic) Jersey home for a visit and the weather was absolutely and unexpectedly gorgeous. Thenceforth the rounds played out nicely, and all in all I would say that this was a most auspicious inaugural for the tournament (although O’C insists that somehow last year’s Lakeland was the inaugural, but that’s why they put asterisks in the record books). You shoulda been there.

On the negative front, although once or twice Little Elvis and Brudda Printer had mild fallings-out, a swift kick in the reboot pants was enough to get them on speaking terms again. The small Pffft field required us to RR it, meaning that schools had to hit themselves, but as always it was before neutral judges, and you can’t make an avalanche out of a tear drop unless there’s an awful lot of snow around [What???]. A couple of people felt that they should be able to leave at what they perceived as the first opportunity, which was before their judging obligation ran out, thus making it not the tournament’s perception of the first opportunity, so some knickers were twisted there, but I only personally was involved in one donnybrook over the weekend, and as a Newbwegian pointed out, it does take a rather obtuse individual to attempt to take on not one, not two, not three but four debate coaches in an argument. And NoShow, in a burst of self actualization, didn’t show up to judge his very last assignment of his high school career. Can you say “apotheosis”?

One benefit of the hoedown was a chance to come to some terms on a tentative calendar for next year, and also to discuss some of the issues of individual tournaments that we’d like to see changed. Mostly we were pushing for more and longer novice events, and I’ll report on them as they coalesce. Meanwhile I updated the Google calendar (it’s on my sked page if you want to see it) and sent it out to some key people for their input. Pretty much everything after December is tentative except for a few obvious events, so don’t ink in this stuff yet. But the idea of planning ahead shouldn’t hurt in the long run. It’s rather revolutionary, actually. Obvious, yeah, but revolutionary nonetheless. This is the debatosphere we’re talking about, after all.

So we’re down to a few last events, accompanying Robbie to the Gem of Harlem and helping Alli prep for CatNats. I played golf yesterday, first time this season. I froze my butt off, played like a tear drop in an avalanche, and went home and took a much needed nap.