Lots of big doings at the DJ. None of them bear repeating
here, but I will point out that they are happening, and they do distract from
my NJ, so you’ll have to put up with me here. Sometimes just juggling one ball
can keep you pretty busy.
The Land of Lakes tournament is this weekend, a tournament
I’ve been going to for over 20 years. Originally it was at the beginning of
January, on what is now the Newark weekend. As often as not, it got snowed out.
This was in the days before global warming, when it still snowed in the winter
more than once and it cold for more than a single weekend. Nowadays, everyone
on the streets is wearing cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts in February and
trying to figure out if there’s any snow in the Klondike for a ski trip. Back then,
when the tournament did occur, I can remember navigating icy roads and generally
considering oneself quite the adventurer for making it in one piece. Various
bids were attached to the tournament then, but in the ways of the TOC
committee, it was deemed unworthy, and slowly but surely they were stripped.
Most of this was in aid of a geographic distribution of bids to the areas where
the TOC committee lived (or to the tournaments they ran), rather than a true
evaluation that Lakeland had lost its mojo. Of course, stripping it of bids did
indeed cost it its mojo after the fact, but I’m sure we all can agree that the
members of the TOC committee getting what they want in their drive for bids is
a lot more important than keeping high school debate alive at the local level.
(Has anyone done an analysis of the schools that attend the TOC? We all know
it's the same ones every year. Given that you need the money to travel to bid
tournaments, and that only so many schools have that money, not to mention the
money for a hundred “assistant coaches” and the like, then it’s—Oh, screw it.
You’ve heard this from me before. If you want more, go read the latest series
of Nostrum.)
Stefan managed to get Lakeland bidded back up at least in CX,
given his own and the school’s policy history and, honestly, the otherwise
almost complete lack of policy bids in the northeast. But the other divisions
are fairly small. So he’s also reached out and brought in middle school PF and
Parli. So overall it’s a fairly full house, but a different one than the norm.
Unfortunately, the NSDA District Tournament also falls on that weekend this
year (March is a mess, weekend-wise), although there’s really little if any
overlap between the events. Still, it would be nice to have some of the varsity
debaters in the novice judge pool. Oh, well. Such is life.
I’ll be heading there at lunch time on Friday, since registration is
from 12-2. Sheryl won’t be chezzing it up, since she has about 800 kids staying at a
not-so-local motel up in Fishkill. I’ll take a good look at the tabroom setups
before I get there. I hate when other people create the tournament, as I much
prefer to suffer from my own mistakes. Which, as CP pointed out to me
repeatedly over the weekend, are many and varied.
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