Academy in action

It worked.

I can only speak to the PF side of things, from personal experience. As intended, we had two sessions. The first was before the rounds began. O’C provided us with Danny M, a former NDCA finalist, and Joe Gazzola, who has been the coach of the Bronx Science team. I had a bunch of pretty elementary questions about how to do stuff, from when to start researching to who writes the cases—very inside baseball material—and Danny was most forthcoming, and interesting. Of course, how a big squad like Bronx does some things may never be the way the Sailors might do them, but still, ideas are ideas. The session in LD was set up the same way. I know our session went well because when I turned to the audience for their questions, a lot of hands came up. Everyone was engaged, and seemed to be getting something out of it. Abhi, leader of the LD session, reported likewise.

The second session for PF was brainstorming on the China topic. Here, Matt Malia, policy coach at Edgemont, joined us, which is sort of like the Pope dropping by for a discussion of the Vatican. Wow! We did this during the off flights, so the groups were small and manageable, and everyone got a chance to speak, be it questions or observations. The only problem I had was that, doing it twice in succession, it took a little while to get our edge again the second time. It might make sense, doing this again in the future, not to go back to back, for just that reason. In any case, I don’t know about anyone else, but I learned a lot. MM helped focus the resolution into two distinct possibilities. Either the growth of a new power is a zero sum game or it isn’t. Either there is a limited amount of power, the acquisition and exercise of which will naturally become China’s goal at the US’s expense, or the equation is open, and everyone can gain on all sides via implicit partnerships. Conservative vs liberal. Hawk vs Dove. Very nice, indeed. One can go at it other ways, but the starting points from this discussion will help people immensely, I’m sure. LD, according to moderator Ari, was, again, a success. I’m not sure how the Policy side went; I’ll get that info this coming weekend, but two out of three ain’t bad, and I’m betting it was three out of three.

The tournament itself was, unfortunately, small. But then again, one of the goals of Academy is to preserve small tournaments. If Byram Hills wishes their tournament to remain on the docket, if I were them I’d embrace the concept, as I know the buzz will be strong on the modules. It could help grow the event, if that’s their goal. I would also, if I were them, work on building up the policy side of things. They’re one of the few regional policy invitationals around, but their costs are high. If they could figure out a way of attracting the NYC policy schools, they’d really be doing a service to the debate community.

Another unfortunate aspect of BH is the severe lack of internet. Even logging in via Ari’s connection didn’t get me email. And there’s literally no phone service except outside the building. I didn’t get a chance to export the data from TRPC to tabroom until I got home Saturday night. And, for some reason, it didn’t seem to work. Tabroom seems to know a bit of what happened, but is not showing full results or pairings. I sent it all to CP for him to sort out. Maybe I was doing something wrong; I don’t claim complete comfort with the system yet. But if not, then a fix is needed, given how many of our venues still have limitations of one sort or another. The thing is, though, if you do use this system, it means that your team results are all available for all tournaments in one place. Not a bad thing at all. [Update: CP pointed to what I have to do. Will do it shortly.]

Throughout the weekend I got various messages from OC down in Florida, where things went swimmingly. He seemed to want to rub it in that he was in the Sunshine State and we were in a thick New York miasma where, driving home, I couldn’t even see the steering wheel, much less the road ahead. This balanced out in the end when his airline explained that the New York miasma was interfering with their flight plans. Nyaah, nyaah! There isn't a lot of bloom left on the rose where the only place you can check into on Foursquare is the men's room of the Fort Lauderdale airport.