Team Spotlight: Rufus King High School

MILWAUKEE, WI – Victory Briefs Daily exists to foster a community that brings together debaters, coaches, parents, and alumni from across the country. Team Spotlight features programs from across the country — schools that compete locally, statewide, and/or nationally — and celebrates the great students, great coaches, and great teams that make this activity possible. This week, I’ll be featuring a Team Spotlight every day. For today’s piece, I was able to chat with Adam Jacobi to learn more about the forensics program at Rufus King High School.

PROGRAM: Rufus King High School
BASE OF OPERATIONS: Milwaukee, WI

DIRECTOR OF FORENSICS: Adam Jacobi
ASSISTANT COACHES: Diane Hardy (Speech & Policy)

NUMBER OF ACTIVE MEMBERS: 60
EVENTS: “All.”

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CURRENT STRENGTH OF NFL CHAPTER: 204 Degrees
DEGREES LAST YEAR: 87
DEGREES THIS YEAR: 57
DISTRICT: Southern Wisconsin

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Jon Cruz: What has been your proudest achievement as a coach?

Adam Jacobi: Proudest is superlative. I coach this activity to empower the kids who need a niche, so they can make something of themselves — giving them a voice, if you’ll excuse the light pun. One early memory is of my first student to qualify to NFL nationals (in 2001), Chris Swope, who amidst a great amount of strife over NFL’s Congressional “Base System,” designed a table to help demystify how Base is calculated. This has since been incorporated into the NFL Congress Manual. While Chris made it to semis that year, I find it more gratifying as a coach that he gave back to the activity in a more meaningful way. I was also so proud of my students this season for adopting a team in our school district that had lost momentum over the past couple of years. Sharing a bus, sharing in success and failure, and breaking down the barriers of competition to appreciate one another engenders the type of life lessons about what communication really should be.

JC: What is the most important issue facing the debate community today?

AJ: Sustainability. Between budget cuts and coach attrition, programs are drying up left and right, and states are eliminating specific graduation requirements in speech/communication and licensure thereof. We need to band together as professionals in this field to advocate for this discipline that covers two of the most ignored zones of literacy: listening and speaking. Veteran coaches are becoming frustrated with the infighting among the coaching communities (I’ve outlined this problem in more detail below), and new coaches are overwhelmed by this same problem.

JC: If you could change one thing about forensics, what would it be?

AJ: Eliminate divisiveness. Wouldn’t it be great if every coach could check his/her ego (and team self-interest) to work toward the greater good of this activity? Wisconsin exemplifies how this is a problem. The Wisconsin High School Forensic Association (WHSFA) was founded in 1895 as the nation’s oldest interscholastic league for this activity. Thirty years later, the NFL was founded in Ripon, Wisconsin. In 1968 and 1970, the Wisconsin Debate Coaches’ Association (WDCA) and Wisconsin Forensic Coaches’ Association (WFCA) were founded, respectively, as coach-run organizations. Two recent officers of the NCFL are coaches from Wisconsin. Yet, for all of influence these leagues have had in and by our state, the activity is shrinking. What good are these organizations if there aren’t members to support them? As coaches, we sometimes get so caught up in the traditions and institutions of what we’re doing, we forget that ultimately, this entire activity exists to serve young people. I am thrilled that as a first step toward that end, the WDCA and WHSFA are holding a joint state tournament this fall. By pooling resources and compromising on the minute details that define the parameters of competition (favoring what the students ultimately prefer and making the event more accessible to a greater audience), we are able to serve our students in the most efficacious way possible. I was thrilled when a month ago, at the spring meetings/conventions of our two coaches’ associations, we had a dinner with stakeholders representing each league I’ve mentioned here. I really want to thank Scott Wunn (NFL Executive Secretary) and Chuck Malone (WHSFA Executive Director) for taking the time to help open dialogue among the coaches as to how we can all work together to promote this activity and reverse its decline. It’s not about “them” or “the other league;” it’s about all of us as coaches and students participating in the same activity. Let’s get over ourselves, please!

JC: Tell us a little bit about the history of debate at Rufus King High School.

AJ: Rufus King is an urban, public school with a magnet college preparatory program centered around the International Baccalaureate (since 1977). Back when my dad was a student at Rufus King in the early 1960s, speech was an intramural activity, and subsequent yearbooks indicated debate and forensics teams that competed locally. In 1982, our NFL chapter was chartered, and in 1994 (my junior year), our first student qualified to NFL nationals. Back when I was on the forensics (speech) team at Rufus King, we had about a dozen students who went to 7-8 meets a year. Now, our speech team of 50-60 students competes 14 weekends a year, and our debate team of about 30 students goes to about 12 weekends. The past couple of years have only seen an upward momentum in terms of our successes, with our congressional debaters earning a Schwan’s School of Excellence in Debate award at the 2005 NFL National Tournament.

The most important evolution I have guided as director over the past nine years is a integration of speech and debate under the greater umbrella of our NFL chapter. That serves to boost involvement in both squads through cross-pollination of our students, and we serve such a diverse population, and I mean diverse in every sense of the word: ethnically/religiously, socio-economically, geographically, etc. We have some students who participate “for fun,” while others live and breathe national-level competition. I like to think I foster a microcosm of the kind of camaraderie I’d like to see among the various leagues and competition orientations thereof. The social interaction among students that Amjad mentions [below] really imbues a deep appreciation for the differences that students bring to the team. Ramadan falls during our fall debate season, and we have several Muslim students on the team who must fast before sundown. Out of respect, the non-Muslim students would not eat at practices, either. Moving forward, I really want to emphasize service through forensics, and our chapter’s participation in the NFL’s “People Speak” initiative will be an important step in that direction.

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Student Amjad Asad ‘07, NFL Chapter President, reflects:

“I enjoy the experiences and conversations with the new and veteran members of the team. It always provides stimulating and intellectual arenas for discussion, but also helps me prepare for a day of intense competition. The way that conversation and competition balance each other makes for very enjoyable experiences on the team, especially since it has a proven record for success.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 9th, 2006 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Team Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.