In which we seek better mousetraps

We’ve pretty much set up the Academy stuff for Byram Hills.

It will all be on Saturday. First, there’s LD and PF brainstorming on the off flights of round 5. Then there’s a session for all on minorities in debate between rd 5 and breaks. And then the first break in each Academy division will be critiqued after the fact for the non-breakers. We’re now in the process of recruiting the module leaders. And there you are.

This seems congruent with what we’ve learned so far. Saturday, once the tournament is in full swing, is better than Friday, when people mostly still have their minds on the debate at hand. And a little goes a long way. The only question mark is how a session works in that elim/prelim interstice. Given that the tournament’s fairly small and we’ll be breaking mostly to Semis in the policy divisions, it shouldn’t be a problem schedulewise. But will people want to hear it? It won't be because the topic isn't intriguing, but if folks get lured into lunch instead, it could be spotty. We'll see.

As long as we are not confronted by the S word. Again.

I have to admit, though, that I’m a little disappointed in the numbers for the Academy tournaments. We certainly brought Monti up a lot, but we didn’t break the bank, and we’re about where we were last year with BH. Given the extremely small number of tournaments that offer invitationals for intermediate debaters, you’d think that people would jump on them. Oh, well. I’m far from giving up on the concept, but maybe I’m flogging a dead horse. I just hope that people realize that small, non-headliner tournaments can only last for so long, and once they’re gone, they’re probably gone for good. What incentive would anyone else have to try to build on these weekends? They’ll never get bids, needless to say. And if people don’t want to go to X.1 to debate, why would they start showing up at X.2?

Of course, we have built a number of tournaments up, most notably UPenn. It did have a clear vision of why it existed, and that helped. That’s why I’ve pushed the Academy idea, to provide a clear vision for the local non-bidders that needed help. If someone has a better vision to propose, this would be the time to propose it.