In which we celebrate NYCFL Grands

 And so we end another season of the NY Catholic Forensic League.

The last tournament is called CFL Grands. On the drive home, Catholic Charlie explained to me that it was not some sort of official designation, but the best name the league could come up with at the time, when the national tournament was called the Grand National Tournament. Today "CFL Grands" makes no sense, except that’s what everybody’s been calling it for the last 30 or 40 years, and it’s probably not going to change any time soon. Who knew?

I have a special fondness for this tournament. In my career, it’s always been held at Stuyvesant High School way downtown in NYC. When I first attended as a judge and coach, Greg Varley and Rose Joyce ran it by hand inside some strange closet, and it took forever to conduct the four rounds to crown our qualifiers. I know why it took so long, because even JV and I do a lot of it by hand in 2026. Tabroom does not like small events, and Grands is seldom numbered more than in the teens. Give tabroom 180 PFers and it will pair them before your finger lifts from the button, complete with judges, rooms, blood types and DNA test results. Give it 16, with 12 of them from 4 schools, and it takes one look and runs out to Starbucks for a flat white. Which is why Joe and I enjoy it so much: it’s not just pressing buttons and perhaps doing some fine tuning. It’s work, with literal cards printed up (which tabroom does do quite admirably, by the way). It can easily take us a half hour to pair the two divisions in 4th round. As a matter of fact, when I got home I adjusted the schedule for next year to account for that better. 

But my fondness for the tournament goes beyond just the joy/b of tabbing. This is a culminating event for the students, in many cases not just for the year but for their entire careers in speech and debate. Sitting there waiting to hand out the trophies, I looked out a a sea of eager faces, everybody cleaned up nicely, everybody getting ready to go on in life having this particular experience of forensics spliced into their genetic makeup. They’re all smart kids, and they have the potential for great lives ahead of them. Again back in the car with Charlie going home, we talked about why we do this in the first place. I obviously have no skin in the game anymore, and there I am, practically week after week. And I’m not the only one. Around here, forensics is primarily a weekend business, and while most teachers rightly claim a weekend break from students (teaching is not easy work), these teachers often are in it for seven-day weeks, and nights, and long bus rides, and God knows what else. And it is, beyond a doubt, all worth it for them. And for their students. Bravo!

I have only two more gigs this year, the NY State Finals in the Bronx and the CFL Finals in DC. As the snow has been melting on the grass around the chez, visions of wedge shots have begun to dance merrily in my head, and we switch from scheduling rounds to scheduling tee times. And life goes on.

By the way, a clipping from this morning’s paper. I do love a good debate movie! A Film That Makes a Strong Argument for the Value of Debate