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. Tournaments are not just competition sites, they are places where you can improve and work. When your round ends, your drive to succeed should not. When a round is over you can scout, prep, ask coaches for help, write blocks, review feedback, and research. You can talk to your coaches, your teammates, judges and your opponents and friends and ask them what arguments they heard in debates they participated in. This is not to say you can't spend any time at tournaments relaxing or socializing! That would be a recipe for burnout, and one of the best things about debate is the friends you make and spend time with. The real habits of champions should include time for both, relaxing when you need to and buckling down when it makes sense.
Debaters in Wyoming love the “two worlds” analysis, so I will apply that tool to scouting. Imagine you get to the semi-finals of a tournament. In one world, you haven't scouted your opponents. You don't know much or anything about their arguments before the debate begins. During the prelims, when you had free time, you chatted with friends, played games, and took a nap under the table. You go into the debate without advance preparation. In the second world, you balanced your downtime during the prelims and used a significant amount to scout your opponents, identify your most threatening competitors, and began to research and write answers to their arguments. In the semi-finals of a tournament, which world would you want to be in? Which world gives you the better chance of winning the semis, and then the tournament? Scouting is important, but it’s not enough to merely talk about arguments. Champions need to buckle down, and get to work. This brings me to my next major point: ABW. Always Be Writing. Once you have actionable intel, the next step is to act. Start to research, start to cut cards, start to put together a file, start writing 2AC or 1AR blocks. ABW. Always Be Writing. Just listening to a judge or your coach talk about those arguments is not the move. The move is to start blocking those arguments out. If someone is telling you smart args to answer a position, write those arguments down. If they make sense as analytics, block them out. If you want evidence to support them, start researching. This applies to coaching you get during the week, coaching you get at tournaments, and feedback you get at tournaments. Don’t rely on your memory – it won’t often work out well for you. Memories fade. You might remember broad strokes, but you’ll forget the warrants or the specific phrasing that you really liked. You might spend time trying to recall or reconstruct, which may or may not work out, when you could have that work already done so you can move on to the next thing you need to prep. You also send a signal when you write down feedback, whether it’s with a coach or a judge. You send a signal that your care about their feedback, that you actually plan to incorporate it. That signal will make your coaches go to war for you and it will motivate judges to want to vote for you in future rounds. What about when you are out of a tournament? When you’ve been defeated, and no longer have any rounds left to compete in? First, every squad should have a de facto rule that no one is out at a tournament until every member of the team is out. If you have a single competitor still in the game, then every member of your squad should be mobilizing to support them. If your teammate is in one semis round, watch their opponent. If you watch the other semis round you can scout your teammate’s potential finals opponents and you can get to work on answers to their arguments during the semis debate. That gives your team the best chance of winning. What about when everyone on your team is out? Tournaments are still scarce resources. You can scout your opponents so you’re more prepared to debate them at the next tournament. You can watch, and flow, good elim debates because doing so will help you improve and debate better next time. Is this asking a lot? Honestly, I think that you will find that as you build these habits, they’ll become muscle memory: automatic to you. And while I am pushing the "champions work hard" angle pretty clearly here, I do want to emphasize I think there is plenty of room for balancing hard work and the great social aspects of tournaments. That said, this level of dedication might not be for everyone, and that’s totally fine! I hope you’ll still put in the extra effort for your teammates! But if you set high goals for yourself, if you want to win one more round than you did at your last tournament, if you have your eyes on a higher prize, whether it’s State or Nationals, then this advice is for you. Because hard work beats talent, and the team that best uses their time at tournaments is going to be the team that dominates. To bring this full circle: the quote that opens this article is from “The Inches Speech,” delivered by Al Pacino in the movie Any Given Sunday. It’s widely regarded as one of the greatest motivational speeches of all time. What fascinates me about this, is that the reason this speech is so good is because it has such an excellent warrant. Most motivational speeches are about hype – they’re supposed to get you going, even if they don’t really say anything. But the inches speech advances an argument: that life (and football), are games of inches. Important things come down to the wire. Good debates, debates against skilled opponents where you have to put everything on the line, those debates are won by inches, not miles. And the inches we need are everywhere around us. You never know what small thing is going to be the inch that gets you to the semi-finals. Small decisions can cost us break rounds, and they can win championships. “They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second.” How you spend your time at tournaments, whether you meaningfully incorporate coaching and judge feedback, those are valuable inches that can add up to making the difference. When you’re at a tournament, the people who will judge your rounds are constantly around you. They see how seriously you take the tournament, and they see when you’re focused and working hard. They also want to vote for the students that are dedicated. Perhaps the most important advice I can offer you is to be the team that builds a reputation for working hard, and taking tournaments seriously. Be the team that writes down everything a judge says. Be the team that’s researching in between rounds, that’s talking to coaches about new arguments, that’s scouting their opponents. All of those things will help you win, and they will signal to your judges that you mean business. “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."
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