If you want people to read a post on your blog, tell ‘em you’re
hitting the road. Jeesh. I got more hits Tuesday than Pete Rose, Ty Cobb and
Hank Aaron combined. (Of course, members of the VCA know full well that this
metaphor did not come trippingly to the typing fingers: I googled it. The thing
is, it’s probably been three or four years since my last sports reference, and
I thought the time was right.)
As I indicated in that post, I’m not quitting debate
altogether. I enjoyed the few encomiums that were tossed my way (much as I
enjoy tossing the word encomium your way—use it three times and its yours), and
it was nice to hear from some of the old-timers who, I assure you, meant very
much to me as I attempted to befog their brains at the height of their
adolescence. They still do. The thing is, my role in debate has shifted over the
years. For a while the Sailors had real boatloads of people shipping out to all
the tournaments. McLean and I were reminiscing Saturday about how we always had
big buses and every flavor of debater from dabbler to debate-is-my-life. That
went on for years, and we had incredible successes at all levels. But I never
did have control of recruitment. Debate at Hudville was always over on the
side, and never a mainstream activity. My also being over on the side didn’t help
that. A lot of S&D talent is recruited mano a mano, when a teacher
recommends a student to the coach, but that’s something that I was never a part
of. We relied on word of mouth and sadly inadequate recruitment visits to the
middle school, and not me pulling them out of AP English and sitting them down
and telling them that they were debaters so shut up and read this copy of On the Genealogy of Morality.
As time went by, the team got smaller, and meanwhile I was
getting more and more involved in tournament management. I’ve heard people
blame the failings of present-day LD on the drift of people from the back of
the room to the tab room, but that’s glib rationalization. Tournaments don’t
run themselves. At the college level, the lack of stable Tournament Directors
is an issue, although the ones I’ve worked with have learned well how to keep
the lore in the team so that the good that TDs have done doesn’t disappear when
they graduate. Nevertheless, a stable adult presence allows registrants to feel secure that
the tournament will come off reasonably well. At the high school level, well,
simply put, there aren’t a lot of people who want to go into the tab room,
period. The vast majority of coaches prefer coaching, for some strange reason,
and tabbing greatly interferes with one’s ability to work with one’s team. Plus, the
vast majority of coaches aren’t interested in solving the problems that tabbing
presents. Tabbing is an odd mixture of high pressure, gut math, boredom,
ukulele music and coffee consumption that either you take to or you don’t.
Tabbing means going out with a computer and pushing ballots on the fly in the
midst of total confusion. Tabbing means holding hands of people who should have
their hands held and slapping the hands of people who should have their hands
slapped, and knowing the difference (which Kaz is arguably the best of us at). And
yes, tabbing is giving up a lot of direct experience of rounds from the back of
the room, but obviously a concerned coach can find plenty of opportunities to
both tab and judge at different tournaments, if that is the goal.
Anyhow, as I said, I’m not quitting altogether. I like
tabbing and will continue doing it if asked (and, if necessary, provided a
hotel room in lieu of tab discounts), so that’s simple enough. But also I
really feel that the region needs some new tabbers. We need to have a handful
of people who can work the machines and provide mature leadership from the back
room. I’ll be around for quite a while, I hope, but when I finally pack it in,
someone’s got to step up and take my place. People have to learn to be
comfortable with the tabroom.com software, and more than that, understand what
tabbing is at the level of tossing cards. For a way long time now we’ve created
machine plunkers, going back to TRPC, who understood the program but not the
underlying process. It’s like knowing how to use a calculator but not being
able to add 2 + 2. I love that calculators exist, but on the fly, I like
knowing that 2 + 2 = 4. There’s a difference.
I’ll be actively trying to recruit tabbers next season. If
you’re interested, let me know. I’ll be working the registration sheets to find
people I can pull from the judge pools to the tab pools. When I finally do go
off into the sunset, I want to go off feeling that I’m not leaving problems
behind for others to solve.
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