In which we explain how to tell a good team from a bad team

 Last weekend at Byram Hills we had an interesting conversation during downtime. We were talking about running waitlists for a variety of tournaments, and in general about the schools that sign up. For the most part, we’re agnostic. As long as an entry is officially sanctioned by its school, we let them in. When it comes to waitlists we’re number crunchers, not judge and jury.

But with some schools, we cringe every time we click the box to let in another of their entries. These are the schools that will bring untrained judges, that will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today (although they will eventually pay you), that beg you to let them leave before their obligations are fulfilled because they have a whole ten minute ride to get home and they don’t want to miss the next episode of America’s Got Malevolence. As a rule, most of these are student-run operations, or at best parent-run with the students pulling the strings, but occasionally some are coach run. One thing they all seem to have in common is a complete lack of alums. That is, their students, who no doubt claim that debate was the most important thing in their high school careers, disappear at the first opportunity. They do not give back, not even if you pay them.

Take a look at the people you think are the best coaches around. I guarantee you that they have committed alums. I guarantee you that they remain connected to their alums long after they stop trying to cajole them into judging one more time. Let’s face it. A coach will work with a student for four years, traveling regularly either to a local event or across the country. They’ll prep, they’ll brainstorm, they’ll eat lunch, they’ll ride endless buses. If a positive relationship doesn’t arise from all of this, something is wrong. Schools with no coaches never get to see this, which may be why the alums aren’t particularly committed to their schools and teams. That’s almost more understandable, albeit sad, than schools where there are coaches, and those coaches can’t get an alum to come back for love or money. You’ve got to ask yourself, what were those coaches doing wrong?

I don’t measure good coaching by the number of wins versus losses. No one will care about that once a student goes to college. Life moves on. Good coaching is measured by the amount students learned, whether or not they ever won a round, and in our world, that learning begins with but extends far beyond the topic du jour and the mechanics of a 1AR. Relationships that last beyond graduation day are the means of making that measurement, the criterion of the value of education, if you will.

The difference between a good team and a bad team is the difference between a bunch of students looking to win rounds for themselves as individuals, and an actual team, with dedicated leadership, looking to make a difference for life. Which is what education is all about. A good coach is the mark of that difference.