We are met

So last night was the first meeting. As usual there seemed to be more speech newbies than debate newbies, but we did pull in our usual 8 or so. It's always 8 or so. I don't understand that. Is there a special underground meeting where the entire school gathers to conspire which 8 or so it's going to be? Couldn't they once make it 10 or so? 12 or so? My guess is that NoShow runs that meeting.

Any questions on whether NoShow showed last night? What would I do without him...

Anyhow, first there's the tutti informational meeting in the library, where we tell people what we do and tell them to follow their hearts. This is a holdover from past days when certain upperclassmen would, in a very serious way, try to get people to their side of the team by making untrue claims that one side was better than the other. Now it's all well and good to play around with the difference between speech and debate, but the bottom line is that a person should do what's right for that person. Any idea that doing one or the other is better is not only misleading, but dangerous. A poor freshman schmegeggie could come in and get pushed around into the wrong side of the activity and quickly give up because it's not for them, and no one has gained anything. So we want to paint everything in nice bright colors and let people make as informed a choice as possible. Let's face it: over the long term we have had pretty much equal success in speech and debate on all counts. Pretending otherwise gets us nowhere. Certainly as a coach I love speech; I just happen to do debate. I certainly have the credentials to do speech (I am a bloody BA in English, for pete's sake), but maybe not the right talents. I think ultimately I like to argue more than I like to perform. But I do like to perform. Obviously.

After the intro we break into separate sections, where I count up to 8 or so and explain things further. Of course, the job announcements were made. AP, the Rocking Chair Killer and Twin M are the Novice Directors, Nicole is the Communications Liaison, and Robbie is the Hardware Engineer. I was tempted to keep Ewok on as HE until graduation, but even I am not all that evil. His last official act was bringing me the bus request forms. Ad astra per aspera, Endorian! And crappy prizes were tossed out in abundance, to set the stage (and to empty the overflowing CP closet a bit).

The first night is, essentially, me talking for 90 minutes. Liz assumes that this puts people into a state of pure catatonia, but I like to think that it's simple verbal dazzlement. In truth, it's mostly my throat getting scratchier until it gives out and then everybody leaves the room screaming. Next week we'll begin training the newbies on what LD is all about, followed halfway into the meeting by a tutti session to go over business and introduce the team at large to Sept-Oct, beyond the briefest mention we made last night. I think there's good solid positions for the newbies to consider for their October sessions; after that, they're on their own, the little suckers.