Ah, the swallows have returned to Capistrano, and everyone is complaining about the New York State Finals again. Must be Spring.
Lord knows I’ve complained myself (http://www.jimmenick.com/states.pdf), and I maintain my original position. There is no malice on the part of the organization, but they’ve locked themselves into what seems to be an unbreakable fix. They feel a need for everything to end at the same time, which is understandable on some level, but which limits the number of rounds to too few for the normal processes of preliminary-roundization to transpire. Secondly, they have a judge setup that is counterproductive (bad ratio, no upperclassmen allowed for the novices and JV); when a strong program like Regis aims at States, its aim is true, and therefore they arrive in force with an army of judges (all of whom I will personally vouch for—if you can’t pick up a Regis judge ballot, you don’t belong in LD), which means that, given the number of Regicides debating, you pretty much can guarantee that you won’t get a Regis judge because you’re more likely, in a double-flighted round, to get a Regis opponent. The math is against you; I work hard on this when I tab, usually at MHLs with Bronx HS of Science Fiction as the gorilla, putting the appropriate pairings in the same rooms so that I can find either Bronx or non-Bronx judges in the appropriate numbers if for nothing else to keep the judges from passing out in the lounge from boredom (and I don’t handpick the judges, I do it at random, for fairness). But you can only go so far with that. The better solution is upperclass judging, which frees up your adult judges from being in the novice and jv pools, thus allowing more likelihood of your coaches and ex-debaters judging your varsity (desirable, and attractive for its possibility of increasing the pool of varsity who might participate) while your underclassmen are getting the judging that, at the very least, they’re used to. And five full rounds, of course, allows for everyone to survive a poor adjudication. The VCA knows well that I support parent judging, but there is no question that untrained judges are not the ticket at a state final, and that is an issue that needs attention. Parent <> untrained, but untrained = bad. Unfortunately the NYSFL seems to be adamantly opposed to student judging. Sigh… In any case, as I always say, the people who do well at States have earned their stripes. Unfortunately, at the same time, people who don’t do well at States have legitimate gripes. Short of revamping the organization, which the organization naturally resists, I don’t know what to say. And, let’s face it, I’ve said it all before.
As antidote to this, today’s bracketology is comics. (Note: Family Circus fans need not apply.)
I managed to mis-post the last couple of Nostrums. What one does is copy, paste and update the code in the XML; therefore, it behooves one, in one’s updating, to change the name of the file which is being pointed to as well as all the other information. Fortunately, the problem was pointed out by a loyal member of the Vast Nostrumian Army, and has been corrected. My apologies to other members of the VNA who have been wondering why I kept posting the same episode.
On the Red Light District front, huzzahs are in order. The Wunn and Only came to town with the Roxanne Plan (that’s a ref for Police fans only) for us to get our membership up. We needed to add 4 chapters and get 1 to pay up. As of the eleventh hour yesterday, as they say in the sword-and-sandal flicks, so it shall be written, so it shall be done. Last night, after a little scrambling (the car wouldn’t start, then I couldn’t find the NFL stuff in the chez, etc.), I sent out an update to the troops. All’s well that ends well, including this paragraph, which now has more clichés in it than [insert your own knee-slapping metaphor for a large number of items].
Tonight, a small chez with Robbie to CatNat him up. Turns out that he didn’t JA much last year when it was all the rage, because Sailors don’t get much of a workout in Nov-Dec. So he’s raw meat, to some degree. And then again, with the rewording of the topic, so is everyone else. Always an interesting subject, in any case.
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