I’ll start by telling you that the BDL camp got off to a good start. We had twelve students on our first day, which was about as many as I’d expected when we first thought about having an institute, but not as many as I’d hoped after the flood of applications we’d received (more than 60). I’ve already heard from one student who is planning to come regularly as of today, however, and the coach at another school is going to call some of him whom he was expecting, so hopefully we’ll have a few more today.
Turnout was very good among coaches, for whom we’re running a parallel program. In fact I’m going to be working with them probably exclusively today.
The kids are a great bunch, as you might expect from the strongly self-selecting group of high school students willing to wake up at 6AM and give up a week of their summer vacations to come to a debate camp, especially when almost all of them are brand new to debate. At the risk of sounding corny and/or self-important, I told them that some of them were going to look back on the first day of the camp as a day that changed their lives. Not because of anything special I did, but simply because for the right person, debate is really something that can change the trajectory of her entire life.
I know because it certainly had that effect on me. This year will be my tenth anniversary in debate, and it is strange to think that ten years after attending that first meeting in the interest of chasing tail, I still dedicate so much of my time to thinking about and teaching this great game.