More mischief!

I am now on the board of the NDCA. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The NDCA doesn’t get a lot of traction in the northeast, which surprises me. After all, there is no other group concerning itself almost solely with providing services and resources to coaches. Presumably the NFL does some of this, but only behind a pay wall. (I find it hard to justify paying a fairly decent amount of money just so my kids can get stickers every few months while being virtually locked out of their tournament or at best treated as second-class citizens. Where’s our second-class citizen discount?) What the NDCA does is free for all; membership is optional and cheap. Plus they run a national tournament according to reasonable procedures, with agnostic apolitical qualification standards, unlike the TOC which, from my personal experience, is an oligarchy built more on personal politics than the realities of high school debate. (Anyone looking at the list of quals could figure that out easily enough.) Still, the TOC, at least in LD, is the ranking national tournament. So it goes.

I have some goals now that I’m part of the group. I would really like to see more coaches around here joining up, and also attending the tournament. My thought is that, if the NDCA communicated better, this might happen. The board splits itself into various responsibilities; I chose working on the website, with a minor in increasing membership. That seems to make sense, given the things I’m good at. I want to build a blog over there for discussion of issues that affect all of us, like MJP. CP, their tech guy, is helping me set that up. I also want to get their Twitter feed more vigorous. There’s not much to it now. And I think that their resources need punching up; some of that stuff is a little long in the tooth. As I said, this is stuff that I’m good at.

What I’m not good at is going to the tournaments that the rest of the board attend. We skyped with them during Big Bronx, and we’ll probably do the same during Glenbrooks. What can I say? I’m not exactly a circuit coach. Then again, I’m totally non-policy, which is also different from the rest of them, I think. A little PF/LD influence never hurt anybody.