Ask Cruz: Volume XVI
NEW YORK, N.Y. — My apologies to my dear readers for the lateness of my column this week — and the absence of my column last week! I had originally wanted to do some sort of St. Patrick’s Day edition, but I wasn’t sure what kinds of questions would fit into such a theme. In any case, keep the questions coming; post them here, or shoot me an e-mail.
I would also like to announce — actually, really, I’d like to tell Josh Anderson — that I finally found a wonderful bubble tea establishment just a few blocks away from my apartment.
Eric Fischer asks, “How many TOC final rounds have been decided by one ballot?”
Close ballot counts may be the norm in the final round of the Tournament of Champions.
In 1994, Ann Miura of Palo Alto defeated Claire Carman of Vestavia Hills on a 2-1. In 1996, Valley’s Courtney Ballentine defeated Apple Valley’s David Singh on a 3-2. Valley’s Tom Zimpleman defeated Vestavia Hills’s Ben Davison on a 3-2 in ‘99. Seamus Donovan of Edmond North bested James Scott of Katy on a 4-3 in ‘00. In the battle of the Tommies, Tom Pryor of Hopkins defeated Tommy Clancy of Westwood on a 3-2 in ‘01. Millard West’s Jenn Larson defeated Apple Valley’s Kelsey Olson on a 3-2 in ‘02. Edina’s John McNeil defeated Apple Valley’s Tim Hogan on a 3-2 in 2004.
I believe — believe — that the first TOC final round was a 3-2 decision, when Bronx Science’s Hee-Sun Hong defeated Jenks’s Greg Hewett for the title.
Finally, most recently, Stephen Hess of Mountain View defeated David Weeks of Highland Park on a 5-4 in ‘06.
P.J. Wexler asks, “What is the record number of different schools a debater has qualified for Nationals for?”
That’s a fascinating question. Some cursory research and asking around turned up very little.
I can tell you that Tara Tedrow qualified for both NFL Nationals and the NCFL Grand National Tournament for both Trinity Prep and Celebration.
P.J. Wexler also asks, “Has any debater ever been champion of more than one state?”
It would appear that P.J.’s initial hunch — based on the e-mail he sent me — was correct. Robert Ewing was not only a state champion of both California and Arizona in policy debate — he originally debated for Yucaipa High School — but actually, he was later the APDA National Champion in Parliamentary Debate as well. He won in 1991 while debating for Princeton. No word if he competed at two different colleges in two different states.
Additionally, while not the National Champion, he was a successful competitor in Extemporaneous Speaking, which went co-ed not very long before he was in high school. And actually, he may have gone to Nationals for two different schools as well.
An anonymous poster asks, “Has an LDer ever gone to a different speech/debate event and produced excellent circuit results?”
Let’s do vice versa first.
Patrick Diehl, who won the TOC last year, was first a policy debater for two years at Lynbrook High School. David Wolfish and David McGough, both from Greenhill, also had policy debate training.
Newman South’s Brandon Fletcher was probably the top policy debater in the country when he decided to make the jump and try to qualify to Nationals in LD. He had tried it a few times on the local Dallas circuit, and with his partner unable to attend Nationals, attempting to qualify in LD made sense. Not only did he qualify, he made it to the final round of Nationals!
Jane Boyd alluded to this in the comments thread of Volume XV. When Fletcher made it to finals, he began his traditional “thank you speech” before the constructive by saying the following:
“My name is Brandon Fletcher, my coach is Aaron Timmons, and I love cross-examination debate. By recently jumping into LD, I have found that there is no difference in scholarship, difficulty between this activity and policy, and I have enjoyed it immensely. This resolution, though I hate it….”
Unfortunately for a Fletcher, a lot of people tuned out at “I love cross-examination debate,” and I’d imagine some others tuned out when it came to the criticism of the resolution. He lost the round.
In any case, Timmons himself recounts the tale — including the panel of judges that accidentally had ten members instead of eleven — in “A/T: Questions for Aaron Timmons,” an interview I conducted in May of 2005.
Alex Stephenson of Eagan was primarily an Extemporaneous Speaking competitor — he was this past year’s National Champion in U.S. Extemp — and he was also the Minnesota state champion in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Also from Eagan was Kevin Troy — profiled in this interview from March of 2005 — who qualified to Nationals in LD, was state runner-up in policy debate, and won Nationals twice in extemp.
For the first version of your question — an LD debater crossing over to another event, and not vice versa — Lake Highland’s J.R. Thorsen won the coveted Original Oratory championship at the Harvard National Invitational last year.
Tim Greenfield was the A debater for Apple Valley and also the runner-up at the NCFL Grand National Tournament in extemp. And well over a decade before that, Seth Halvorson — also of Apple Valley — was the state champion in LD and the NCFL in Original Oratory. Interestingly, the runner-up at the NCFL won NFL Nationals in Oratory — and Seth was runner-up!
Anjan Choudhury asks, “Doug [Jeffers] was also a Champion Lip Sync competitor on the famed Houston middle school circuit circa 1999. Does that count?”
Yes.
—
Jon Cruz quadruple-qualified to the New York State Forensic League Championship Tournament in Lincoln-Douglas debate, Extemporaneous Speaking, Duo Interpretation, and Student Congress.
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31 Responses to “Ask Cruz: Volume XVI”
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Posted from: 70.241.146.250
March 22nd, 2008 20:41
If I remember my VBD coverage correctly, Tara Tedrow made it to outrounds of NFL Nationals (in LD) her sophmore year, when she would have been debating for Trinity Prep.
Posted from: 68.196.204.142
March 22nd, 2008 22:32
Jon, how could you quad enter? We can max double enter :[
Or was new york’s policy different in the past?
Posted from: 68.175.98.39
March 22nd, 2008 23:37
We sadly cannot even double-enter at States. I qualified in four events but competed in LD at the tournament.
Posted from: 68.196.195.40
March 23rd, 2008 09:00
bubble tea ftw
Posted from: 71.96.207.85
March 23rd, 2008 19:16
Until the early/mid 90’s people used to cross enter in debate and IE’s MUCH more frequently and in greater numbers than they do now it seems. Some of the best debaters I have ever seen did debate and extemp and/or oratory having great success in both.
Posted from: 68.175.98.39
March 24th, 2008 06:21
A good question that I’ve wanted to explore is *why* we’ve seen such a decline in cross-entering. I remember doing extemp and LD at Harvard in 2000 and 2001. Now, that option isn’t allowed? Is it simply that folks think it’s too hard to compete in both? Or did many tournaments collectively recognize the logistical challenges of allowing cross-entry between debate and the IEs? (I ran a tournament twice with cross-entry and it was very difficult.)
Posted from: 151.198.226.100
March 24th, 2008 10:05
At our districts, we may cross over, which is a huge shock (because no other tournament that our school attends allows for that option).
I do plan on doing a number of speech events next year, mostly imprompt or extempt (I have yet to decide on which one, but it will be a trivial decision). But that would be sacrificing local debate rounds :[
I for one would love to see double-entering to be a much more frequent occurance. Still, since you cannot qualify to compete in nationals for 2 events, I might as well just focus on debate.
Posted from: 38.118.12.10
March 24th, 2008 10:23
I think the NFL deciding that students could no longer double-enter is a fair indication of the logistical issue as many invitationals seem to have followed suit. It may also be a partial cause. When you could do both at NFL nationals — which is for many the ultimate championship — there was a large incentive to develop two or more events. Now, a student knows that ultimately, they will have to choose. The same holds true (though I think it always has) for NCFL. The same also holds true for TOC, where I had one student turn down a fully qualified entry in Congress just because she has chosen to focus on LD. Yes, it is true that one could do both the TOC in Extemp and another event, but my sister Tanya did that and I have to say that it seemed like a pretty grueling prep. NFLs, by contrast, seemed like one of the few places where one could do two events without feeling entirely worn out.
That said, let me make the larger point: I personally believe that doing multiple events not only helps you gain a bigger sense of communication skills for life (the post-debate time period we rarely reference), but it also helps in developing your own skill set within your chosen “focus event.” There is no real way to test this but it is interesting to me — anecdotally — that the rise of procedural emphasis/internal (to the event) argumentation correlates (only roughly) to the decline in commonplace multiple-event participation. Again, I offer no real proof here but there seems an intuitive assertion that increases in event-specialized participation has something (maybe very little, maybe more) to do with increases in event-specialized argumentation.
Anyhow, I use to love walking into an LD elim round and saying “Sorry I’m late, Dramatic (or Poetry) finals got delayed.”
Posted from: 216.250.178.113
March 24th, 2008 12:06
I know that our speech coach thinks debate takes too much time (or something like that) and will not allow the debaters to join the speech team unless they give up debate. Does this happen for anyone else?
Posted from: 66.229.189.247
March 24th, 2008 14:49
No at our school its the opposite. Anyone who does debate at my school must either do congress or an IE event before doing debate. I’ve personally done DI,HI,GI (group interp for the non-floridians), and Congress while doing LD as my “focus” event.
Posted from: 71.139.25.185
March 24th, 2008 15:21
I believe that 2006 TOC was a 5-4.
Posted from: 76.212.193.250
March 24th, 2008 15:37
at our league tournaments we have separate tournaments for debate and IEs (we also put public forum, parli, and congress on a separate day)so we can easily double enter
Posted from: 75.25.130.115
March 24th, 2008 19:17
Is it possible to get a “ghost” auto-qual to the TOC? For example had Jake been 14th seed at the last year’s TOC instead of 13th and hit Ravi in the run-off round, what would have happened? Did debaters from the same school ever hit each other in a run-off before?
Posted from: 68.175.98.39
March 24th, 2008 19:28
I will answer #13 in my next installment.
Posted from: 74.70.112.133
March 24th, 2008 19:41
suspense
Posted from: 68.192.31.214
March 24th, 2008 20:10
I don’t see how that would be a “ghost” autoqual :\
Posted from: 168.221.143.68
March 25th, 2008 05:19
If you clear at the TOC, you’re auto-qual’d… so I guess it’s something along the lines of two people from the same school hitting each other in the bubble round, but they probably wouldn’t get it… prelims are different from breaks.
Posted from: 75.134.137.132
March 25th, 2008 11:41
To # 17 a run-off is different than a bubble round. A run-off is an extra round.
Posted from: 75.25.130.115
March 25th, 2008 17:42
From what I understand, you auto-qual if you get in the top sixteen (octas) and you break if you go 5-2, so it’s possible to clear to a run-off and not auto-qual. Otherwise my question wouldn’t make sense.
Posted from: 70.111.96.81
March 26th, 2008 20:20
Ben: Our district allows “crossing over” in the sense that you can do Congress and LD or CX, but if you’re in LD you can’t double enter in other speech events. This is only allowed because Districts Congress is separated from the actual Districts tournament.
Posted from: 168.221.143.68
March 27th, 2008 05:10
Uh… this isn’t exactly a conventional question, but…
My girlfriend refuses to go to Prom with me because she hates formal gatherings, but I really don’t want to go alone, and if I take someone else, I won’t hear the end of it. Viewing the situation objectively… what should I do?
Posted from: 205.221.1.209
March 27th, 2008 06:12
you should ghost auto-qual to the TOC
Posted from: 69.134.16.205
March 27th, 2008 07:11
:/ Go to TOC’s cuz its probably the same weekend.
Posted from: 68.88.196.12
March 27th, 2008 07:15
If my memory serves me correctly, I believe Jessica Bailey would also fit in the category of a successful LD debater crossing-over into other events. In 1999, she was one of the top circuit debaters and then won NFL’s in extemporaneous speaking.
Posted from: 150.212.4.98
March 27th, 2008 10:38
prom is for little eichmanns.
a question: when crossfire/ted turner/public forum debate was introduced the nfl published an event description, rules etc. has anyone been able to dig through the rostrum archive to find a similar initial document for LD? i’m interested purely as a matter of history (although im sure some people would love to finally have rules!!)
Posted from: 66.233.57.238
March 27th, 2008 12:32
all i know is that the NFL ballot says i don’t have to defend any absolute claims, only on balance.
Posted from: 207.118.196.193
March 27th, 2008 13:54
jess was actually the poster child for nfls in the late 90s. she won expository as a sophomore, lost in finals of ld as junior, and won fx as a senior. arguably, debate was the event she was worst at :)
Posted from: 64.91.217.43
March 27th, 2008 14:22
michael the rules for ld, i believe, can be located on the nfl website.
Posted from: 66.168.79.156
March 27th, 2008 18:12
@michael: That would be fun to see. We have archives of the Rostrum that far back in print. When things settle down in the office, I’ll see what I can dig up and either put it on the NFL website or have Jon do something fun with it. The current online archive only goes back to ‘94.
Posted from: 68.175.98.39
March 27th, 2008 18:56
Michael — I have a very early Rostrum that discusses a lot of the discussion on “rules” and “theory” from Dale McCall, Richard Sodikow, and other early thinkers in the event. I’ll transcribe some of the articles in the near future.
Or…if Cherian can digitize it, he can be my guest. :o)
Posted from: 69.48.155.2
April 1st, 2008 14:27
The first rule of LD is you do not talk about LD.