Saturday was the annual NYCFL moderators’ meeting down at Iona. For me, this always marks the official beginning of the season. One sees a bunch of the old faces, catches up on the local forensics news, and eats a fine corn muffin. The corn muffin alone would be worth the trip, but the other aspects are nice too.
In terms of things worthy of reporting, the first is that Lakeland has agreed to host a novice/jv championship on their weekend for both LD and policy. This is the old Bishop Guertin event that disappeared last year. NFA had talked about taking it over, and Sheryl and Michael were reporting this arrangement with Lakeland, which if you ask me is a sterling deal. There is no sense that there will be any changes in States forthcoming, so here is an opportunity for a real 5 rounds and a fun end to the season, and it’s just around the corner! Let’s hope it works out.
We laid out the calendar, and I’m happy to report that the Scarswegians will take on Districts again this coming year. Stuy is hoping to bring Grands back to their venue (Chinatown dinner!!!). Most of the other events were where they usually are. One interesting item is the question of how CFL will handle Pffft nationally. It looks like they’ll add CatNat competition, which means that we will add local competition. What we agreed was to add Pfffft to the 3 tournaments with LD; since two of these are at Regis, which is a big Pffft school, this makes sense (although it’ll be a tight squeeze in December). I’m hoping to get more Sailors to take on Pffft during the breaks in LD (for instance, Nov-Dec). I think it’s no big deal for LDers to do both (easier than, in some respects, LDers doing Extemp, and just as desirable for stretching the breadth of one’s experience and skills). In any event, I’ll tab the Pffft for the time being (and borrow and steal judges liberally from and to the LD pool).
We also agreed to institute LD training, a la the way they do speech training. People observe a round, then during round 2 we discuss stuff and do Q&A, then they go off to observe a third round. I see no reason not to attempt this in MHL as well. It will help relieve much parental pressure, no doubt.
JV was there Saturday, and he briefly went over the list of Bullpup judges, which we assume is still less than complete. He suggested that all judges serve in either pool on Friday, then we break into separate pools Saturday (excluding literal Bullpup judges, who can adjudicate till their brains fall out, which is SOP at all tournaments) until Elims, when everybody is back on board again. Shouldn’t be a problem. After the meeting I went home and spent way too much time entering data into TRPC, but I have to admit I was satisfied at a job well done when I was finished. I needed that block of time, otherwise I’d have been scrambling all week. Tonight, after registration closes, I’ll pull a final list of judges for input, and run off copies of the tabroom.com info, and compare it to mine. By Friday we should be all on roughly the same page. Should be fun on a stick, as they say. All this delving into tabroom.com leaves me with much respect for it on most counts, but a sense that it is wild overkill for the MHL, into which I had originally been planning to introduce it. I’m now officially moving away from that.
And finally, I think we are, indeed, final on the trip Friday, with various cars and various times. I’ve sent a message to the proper authorities at the school explaining the details. It’s damned complicated, but short of spending too much money on buses, that’s how it’s got to work. Are there any topics on the upcoming NFL list about increasing funding to high school forensics teams?
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