A lot of discussion and thought is going on about how to handle things next year. One thing that is going to be problematic is the traditional two-day high school tournament starting on Friday and ending late on Saturday. The thing is, the most you can swing with a sane schedule is six rounds, two on Friday and four on Saturday. And that’s it, at least with double flights. If you can single-flight it, you’re better off, but the idea of single-flighting is almost inevitably some sort of wishful thinking unless your tournament is already established as such. They expected it at the Massachusetts finals. They’ll expect it at Scarsdale. And for a short one-dayer with upperclass judging, I probably can pull it off in the NYCFL events. (We’re thinking starting with 3 rounds at the first tournament to get noobs onto the bus, then going to 4. We’re also hoping to add policy; we’d have 3 of them.) But in the world at large, the judging for single flights just isn’t there, at least where it counts. I think some people have a vision of a virtual judge consortium where rounds are sold to the highest bidder, but even if that is a good idea—and I don’t know that it is—it would require a bit of personnel management that isn’t exactly the strength of our activity. It’s going to be more like freelancing in general, something I know a little bit about from my publishing days. Freelancers who want business have to work at getting it; freelancing is like having a job without the steady paycheck, in aid of getting paychecks steadily. (That’s a great quote. I’m wasting it here.) A loose amalgam of mostly college students looking to judge on occasion for the odd extra bucks? That’s a different thing. And you can forget the idea of judges around the country available everywhere; once tournaments realize that shifting their schedules for the purposes of attracting other timezones is a mug's game that only ends up punishing your regular guests, judges sitting on the dock of the bay are not going to want to be up and flowing at five a.m. their time at good old Bigle X or Rather Large Bronx. Ain't happ'nin'.
Anyhow, the point is, Fri-Sat isn’t going to hack it except for certain smallish tournaments with guests that want that sort of debate. Going Sat-Sun, on the other hand, solves the problem fairly decently. I don’t know how that will play in real life, though. I’m not so much worried about the debaters, or the LD and CX judges. It’s the PF judges that are going to be the ones most likely to balk. Then again, with decent management on the parts of coaches, resources can be organized so that the burden is well shared.
As you can tell, I’m thinking aloud here. The college schedule is pretty much set at this point, with 2 prelims on Fri, 4 on Sat, and elims on Sunday, with caps on some divisions if warranted. I don’t see the average HS invitational going to that (i.e., any tournament with less than a quarters bid) because it’s way too demanding. (And for that matter, there is some question about Friday afternoon rounds if school is in session. Can the debaters get home in time for round 1? A little of that will go a long way.) So I guess Sat-Sun is going to be a thing for the high schools in the region with semis and finals bids. The question is whether they are going to A) be able to get their heads around it early enough for scheduling purposes, and B) be able to pull it off.
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