Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
Quickdraw posts are snapshot reflections that are usually spurred by experiences the WDR staff have while judging at Wyoming tournaments. This quickdraw is about NSDA points. Hot take: the world would be a better place without NSDA points. At the last tournament I attended, I noticed two related phenomena that trouble me: debaters measuring their own self-worth through NSDA points, and debaters measuring their opponent's talent through NSDA points. I heard one debater say they were worried because they were going to debate "the top team in Colorado." This statement mystified me. Top team according to who? I honestly don't believe that we have a metric to determine this. Were they last year's state champion, I wondered? Nope -- it was NSDA points. I've heard other debaters either boasting about their NSDA points in an event or worried that their NSDA points reflected poorly on them. I don't like any of this. First, I don't think NSDA points come anywhere close to measuring the quality of a debater (or even an interper or platformer). NSDA points prioritize quantity of competition over quality and they quite simply can't capture the data inputs that really measure a competitor's strength. I think we should be very careful when it comes to ranking students and nothing leads me to believe that NSDA points are an appropriate way to do that. Second, I don't like either the trepidation or the overconfidence that brooding over NSDA points produces. I don't want any debater to get in their own head because they're worried about their opponent's NSDA points. I have been doing this activity for over 20 years, and I have never spent a single second of my life worrying about my debater's NSDA points. I have never once thought that one of my teams might be in trouble because their opponents have a lot of NSDA points. I encourage you to adopt the same mentality. You will be better off and more successful for it. Bonus hot take: sweepstakes points are also sus. I worry they encourage thinking about what is best for the school instead of what is best for individual competitors.
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Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
“You find out life’s this game of inches. … The margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second, too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch because we know when we add up all those inches, that’s going to make the … difference between winning and losing, between living and dying.” – Any Given Sunday “Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.” -- Tim Notke “A dropout will beat a genius through hard work.” -- Rock Lee One of the amazing things about debate is that so many of the variables that determine your success are things you can exercise control over. Writing a new aff, researching your rival’s case, giving rebuttal redoes: these are all examples of things you can do to radically improve your chances of success. You can spend time practicing flowing, doing cross-x drills, or learning how to integrate technology into debate. You can prepare for tournaments by scouting your opponents and making sure you're prepared to debate their arguments and innovating novel arguments to get a leg up on your competition. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out. All of those are things you can do any day of the week, either on your own, with teammates, or with coaches. However, there are some things you can only do at tournaments. Tournaments are a scarce resource. You only get to go to so many. Therefore, the time you spend at tournaments is extremely valuable. This post is about how to best improve your chances of success in debate by making sure you use that time well. Read the complete article below the fold. Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
This past weekend a program I volunteer with attended the Cheyenne Central and Alta tournaments, and in both places our LD debaters encountered novel arguments and argument structures. After the tournaments, I was sent some smart questions about the nature of LD. I liked these questions a lot and thought I’d write up something similar here. Read the complete article below the fold. Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
I’ve gotten the chance to judge at a few Wyoming high school tournaments this year, and I’ve loved every second of it. When it comes to the LD rounds I’ve been lucky enough to judge, one thing stands out to me: that value criterion debates seem to be shaped more by rote habit than actual in-round strategic utility. My soul read of many of the debates that I’ve judged is that debaters have been told that the V/C debate matters, that they should spend non-insignificant amounts time on it, and they should win that theirs is better; however, many debaters don’t know why it matters or how it will shape the outcome of the round. This is not to say I haven’t heard good warrants about why pragmatism is preferable to the social contract, etc, but rather that it oftentimes seems like the V/C debating is not connected to a win condition. If you zoom out, it’s unclear why winning the V/C means winning the round. The thesis of this article will be that your V/C should either give you a win condition or you should drastically reduce the amount of time you’re spending debating it. Read the complete article below the fold. Friends and colleagues, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all of you this year, and especially during the State Championship. I’m overjoyed to find myself in a state with such a vibrant speech and debate culture. Your students are brilliant and hardworking. I look forward to seeing all the successes I’m certain your students will achieve at NSDA Nationals. However, I do think that there are a few rules in Wyoming debate that are creating roadblocks to the magnitude of success that Wyoming could enjoy. I've attached a file with the rules change proposals here.
Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
I believe that in nearly all aspects of debate, more transparency translates to stronger competitors and more educational benefits from debate. The clearest instance of this is argument disclosure. Once an argument is read, competitors should not seek to hide it from each other. In-depth interrogation of arguments is the very best that debate has to offer, and arguments that cannot stand up to the scrutiny of a rigorous challenge are not arguments that deserve to win. I embrace the mentality that debaters should “tack their cases to the wall.” |
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