BDL Tournament Trip Report, Day 1

Sorry for the recent silence – I was in Boston over the weekend running a debate tournament for the Boston Debate League. I don’t have a WYP for this week, so instead please enjoy this Trip Report which hopefully will provide a behind-the-scenes insight into the world of high school debate, or our own little corner of it anyway:

 

There are 174 high school students registered for the debate tournament I am running this weekend. Roughly 135 will actually show up to compete, but not all of those 135 will be among those who registered in advance. These students will compete Friday evening and all day Saturday. Most of them will, anyway – a few show up, without warning, on only one day or the other. Just as many will be competing simultaneously at another of our schools, most of which are not large enough to host so many debates at once. That other school is not my responsibility at all.

About half as many middle schoolers will debate in their own separate competition at my school on Saturday only. They are kind of but not really my responsibility.

When I stepped down, three and a half years ago, as executive director of the Boston Debate League (BDL), we were lucky to get 40 kids at a tournament. Obviously there was no need to spread them out across two sites. There were no middle school debaters.

There were no paid employees, either, unless you count the alumni of the league to whom I paid a small stipend to judge at competitions. We had a lot of volunteers, some of them quite committed, but I still did virtually everything myself. The new Executive Director was the BDL’s first full-time employee.

When he told me that he’d be out of town this weekend, I jumped at the chance to help out by directing the tournament at one of its two locations. Running tournaments was my favorite part of running the BDL. They were a high that invigorated me to push through the often boring work of fundraising, volunteer and Board recruitment, and league administration. I found an old blog entry from my days as director, in which I described the tournament experience thusly:

“All of this logistical work occurs amidst a blur of commotion: stomping feet, pounding music, beeping timers, and the din of young voices echoing through the vast hallways of this big brick schoolhouse. I puzzle over the constantly shifting matrix of school names and student initials, all the while incorporating last minute changes, pointing late arrivals vaguely in the direction of the auditorium, where donuts and coffee await them, and fending off unimportant inquiries and requests to “hurry, the students are getting restless.” It is as demanding as playing eight tables of poker at once, and I love every second of it.”

This tournament is much larger than the ones I used to run, but I’m not doing it alone. There’s a volunteer working the tournament tabulation program on a BDL-owned computer, another volunteer manning the judge desk, and two employees handling the logistics of feeding all these students, setting up awards, and otherwise ensuring that things run smoothly.

It’s a little unclear, at first, what exactly my role is aside from overseeing all this activity. It soon becomes clear, though, that none of these individuals is sufficiently experienced to know how to resolve efficiently and effectively the multitude of little issues that always arise at these tournaments.

For example, Elbert, the volunteer on the computer, has used the tabulation program only once before. It would surely be faster for me simply to take over for him, since I have to tell him how to do most things anyway, but I won’t be at future tournaments and he will. He’s a capable and dedicated volunteer, and time invested in on-the-job training for him is well worth it, even if it can get frustrating when things get hectic.

Things get hectic very quickly. Over the next hour and a half, debaters and their coaches trickle into the host school’s cafeteria where several aluminum trays stuffed with salad and pasta await them. My first job is to find the coaches and compare the roster they submitted earlier in the week with the list of students now physically present in the building. For the most part they’re ready with quick and clear information, but there are always a few question marks, students who are supposed to be coming but not yet here.

As I collect updated data from each school, I bring it back to the tabulation room (“tab room”, from now on) and help Elbert make the necessary changes. Everything goes smoothly enough except that five minutes before the pairings for the first round are to be released, one school has not yet arrived. I get the coach on the phone, introduce myself, and have her tell me how many teams she’ll have competing. We can figure out the names later; for now I just need the numbers to get the round paired.

In policy debate, students compete in teams of two. Thus, a school that brings ten students would usually have five teams. A school with nine students would also have five teams, with one student debating “maverick” or by himself. A school with ten students could actually have six teams, if two of their students aren’t getting along and insist on both debating solo. We discourage it, but it’s been known to happen.

The BDL offers three divisions of competition: Varsity, Junior Varsity, and Novice. The latter is a new addition since my departure, and to be honest I’m not clear on the distinction between Novice and JV. For my purposes, it doesn’t matter. I just need to know that they are distinct.

We’ll have two debate rounds, each about an hour and a half long, tonight. Teams will be paired randomly for these two rounds, with the caveat that teams from the same school will not be matched against each other.

There is one, very broad topic that students debate for the entire year. This year it has to do with the US federal government’s role in space exploration. Everyone must argue both for and against such exploration. If you’re Affirmative, arguing for it, the first round, then you’ll be Negative in the second. The computer, thankfully, handles all of this for us.

Elbert and I update team information for the school that is just now arriving and quickly print a pairing for the first round, just in time for the opening announcements. The cafeteria is large and bustling, and when it gets as quiet as it’s going to get I still have to shout to be heard. “Welcome to Tech Boston Academy! Thank you all for coming out to compete today. My name is Andrew, and I used to be the director of the League. I’m really excited to be here today, and I’m simply amazed by how many of you there are here. In my day we were lucky to get 30 or 40 debaters. I’m posting pairings now. Please make your way to your rooms immediately, rounds need to be underway in fifteen minutes.”

Two hundred students, coaches, and judges converge on the sheets of paper even before I’m finished taping them up on the wall. The complaints are quick to follow. “What team am I on?” “Do we have keys?”

The pairings identify teams by school name and a letter: “Tech Boston A”, for example. This is a change from my time, and one whose logic I don’t understand. Apparently students and coaches don’t yet know which team is which and need the tab room to give them a “key” that identifies which students are on which team. Elbert runs back to the computer to print these, and the coaches follow. Ultimately this is a set-back of less than minutes.

The bigger problem is that the judge table hasn’t done a great job of checking-in judges as they arrive. This means that we have only a vague idea of which of our registered judges is and is not actually here and available to judge a debate. We need at minimum one judge for every two teams, which means 35 judges for each round. Judging is technically part of the coaches’ job description, but they hate doing it and do have better things to do, so we use volunteers as much as possible. The drawback of this is that they can’t always be counted upon to show up when they say they will, and there’s nothing we can do if they don’t.

All we can do is put out ballots with the name of the judge scheduled to be in each round and then see which ones get picked up. We instruct all the other volunteers to stand nearby, ready to fill in as needed for those who aren’t actually present. This means that the last rounds to start are a good twenty minutes behind the first, and by the time I and one of the BDL employees walk the halls to ensure that each debate is actually underway, the round is half over.

Thankfully, Round 2 is paired randomly, meaning that the outcome of Round 1 won’t influence it and we can get started on it immediately. In fact, Elbert already has this underway when I get back to the tab room. What he doesn’t have is up-to-date information about which judges are here, which means that we once again have to do the print-and-substitute-as-needed method of judge assignment.

Still, Round 2 gets underway without too much drama, and then it’s time to enter the results from Round 1. We have to record both which team of two won and lost each debate and also speaker points awarded to each of the four students in the debate based on the quality of their individual performance. At the end of the day on Saturday, we’ll give awards to both the teams with the best win-loss records and the individual students with the highest speaker points.

Round 3 is going to be power-paired off of the first two rounds, meaning that teams that won their first two debates will be paired with other teams who also won their first two debates. Thus, we can’t begin pairing Round 3 until all of the results from Round 2 are in. Round 2 is the last one of the night, so students and coaches depart as they finish, until finally only the four of us remain at the school, working diligently in the tab room to prepare for tomorrow.

Elbert and I finish up the Round 3 pairing, which we know will have to change depending on which judges and debaters actually show up tomorrow. Meanwhile one of the other BDL employees sets up another computer and printer for the middle school administrators to use. I can tell from his sighs that it isn’t going well. “I keep getting this printer error,” he tells me.

I take over for him and mess around haphazardly with the printer configuration for a few minutes. He leaves the room to finish cleaning up the food in the cafeteria. I unplug and replug the printer’s USB cable. He returns to the sound of printing. “You’re a genius,” he tells me with a clap on the back. We’ve got the first, shorter day of the tournament under our belts.