Our ongoing discussion of the sources of division between the affiliates of Region 2 and the NCFCA cannot be complete without considering the "Big Switcheroo of '08" aka the Irvine Non-Championship.
NCFCA Pulled Out of California Almost Four Years Ago
We begin this topic by looking back at history. Was there something wrong with the '06 San Diego Open? The interested reader may check this independently on the NCFCA website. From the founding of the league until the '06 SD Open, there were nine tournaments of national scope in NCFCA and five (5) of those were in California. Since that event, NCFCA has held fourteen (14) tournaments of national scope, and none (i.e.- zero) of those tournaments have been held in California. Of the last 14 national tournaments, three were held in the west, one in Ohio, and ten (10) have been held in former Confederate states, including the last four National Championships and all of last year's National Opens.
It is understood that some parts of the country aren't strong enough on the ground to run a National Open or Championship. This point has been made clear by the national leadership themselves in speeches at the Opens. Region 2, however, does have practice running large tournaments & all the big clubs who would contemplate proposing such a tournament are aware of the local burden required.
Did California Bid For A National Tournament?
In fact, there was an attempt to bring the '08 Nationals to Irvine. This was a very credible bid at a large facility with a strong on-campus advocate. Let me say clearly that I was not part of the team pitching this bid to the national leadership, but every affiliate in Region 2 who attended the qualifier in January was told "Nationals is (probably) going to be here this year". Most of the state was told as late as April 4th 2008 that the region 2 team was still working to bring NATs to CA, although the national leadership was apparently unhappy with the off-campus facilities at that point. Less than two weeks later, the Birmingham site was announced. Switching the site into Alabama that late came as a surprise & $ shock $ to many Region 2 affiliates who had been expecting a local event.
The Ill-Fated Alabama Nationals
There were three aspects of the Birmingham site which compounded the negative reaction of many Region 2 affiliates to that particular tournament, in escalating seriousness. First, when arriving in Alabama, it was clear from the slate of individuals running the event that there was no Region 2 responsibility at all: every announced tournament role was covered by regions 3 through 10. OK, so that's not a big deal, Region 2 gets the week off, but one can't help but wonder if it was a side-effect of the failed Irvine bid.
The second problem only lasted a day or two, it concerned Region 2 parents getting locked out of the IE judge pool. It seems the IE ballot push operation was told to enforce "state protect" for judge selection... except there's usually at least one Region 2 competitor in every room. Obviously this was a side effect of aspect #1, nobody involved in directing the IE ballot push had remembered California is a single state region. Now for some parents, being told "you can't judge that room" for all the available ballots is like getting a "get out of jail free" card & they will happily scamper off to watch their own children; but enough parents complained that the Region 2 leadership was able to correct the practice & by day three IE ballots were available to Californians again.
The third problem in Birmingham was the most serious by far. The mid-week banquet was listed in the official program as being held at "Zamora", which sounds vaguely like it might be serving Moroccan food? Driving off into the woods of Jefferson County one arrived at the "Zamora Temple", owned by a fraternal order & rented for the evening. This particular facility was festooned with Masonic symbols.
NCFCA affiliates are nothing if not diverse, and most of them take their faith pretty seriously. The vast majority of families with tickets marched in to eat dinner & listen for the breaks, but there was a fragment of the crowd which took deep offense to the facility & refused to enter. Although this fragment wasn't exclusively Region 2 (there were some Texans & possibly others), word spread among the CA competitors & many started approaching their parents asking to leave the disturbing temple.*
This disconnect is a cultural issue: renting such a facility was surely normal for affiliates in that part of the country. If the core national leadership was composed of a broader team, with representation from all parts of the country, could this error of providing spiritual offense to some NCFCA families have been avoided?
Shortly after the Birmingham site was announced, there was a prank posting on the web indicating the facility was some kind of dangerous wreck, this proved to be untrue. The school itself was fine & the full enclosure offered respite from the heat & humidity. The local club did a heroic job working the event & the community judge push was outstanding. It's important to note that almost everything which went wrong with the tournament was beyond the control of the local club, it's just really unfortunate that their tremendous efforts were marred by a few actions of the national leadership. Also, there was a great afterparty at a local park, organized by a prominent league leader from the South but heavily attended by Region 2, this helped improve the general mood. Due to all these positive aspects, many Region 2 affiliates would have surely gone back to the Alabama Open the following spring, if it didn't follow the San Diego Qualifier by two days (& some did anyway).
Was the Big Switcheroo an Isolated Incident?
Apparently not. Region 2 offered bids for National Opens in both '07 and '09 (at least) and neither one was accepted. So the last fourteen tournaments of national scope outside California cover a period when three serious Region 2 bids were turned down by NCFCA. Almost as bad as the "Big Switcheroo", there were only two National Opens in '09, leaving some to question if the NCFCA would rather skip a tournament than let an Open run in California.
Bob Jones
I don't want to spend a lot of time on this topic, since it has been so extensively covered by other bloggers. Personally, I had no problem with the '09 NATs location: the facility was great, the weather was pretty good, everyone on campus was very friendly & the ballot working area was plush. The University seems eager to put the past behind them & get on with the 21st Century. But the topic of cultural disconnect cannot be passed over without mentioning this situation.
On the one hand, Bob Jones is a logical choice for an NCFCA tournament. Their student body includes a large proportion of home schoolers, and their curriculum is in use all across the country. But surely even the most ardent partisan of this school can admit that the choice for the '09 Nats was potentially controversial? That perhaps "inflammatory" would be a better word in the West, where the full spectrum of interracial marriages was common even in the 19th century? And that this inflammatory choice would be personalized in California, since every major club in Region 2 includes interracial affiliate families?
Also, the Protest That Didn't Happen was handled in a way that further alienated many Region 2 affiliates. The national leadership sent a letter to the league: "if you don't like the choice, don't come" (an option that wasn't available with Zamora due to lack of disclosure). Rumors of web-based witchhunts circulated, with threats to throw competitors out of the tournament. Finally, there was the "mandatory" orientation, wrapped in it's own threat & thereby tending to confirm the earlier rumors. This Protest Suppression Operation was "successful" in preventing an incident that might have fizzled out on it's own anyway, but at a price. Some people saw the national leadership as hypocritical, given the emphasis on "Generation Joshua" & political/cultural activism, others merely viewed the leadership's approach as a heavy-handed overreaction which tended to confirm & sustain the facility controversy in everyone's mind.
What I haven't seen posted about the '09 protest is the context of the immediately preceding Nationals. NCFCA alumni were a major factor in promoting the concept of a protest, they had all either experienced the "Zamora Ambush" or heard about it. For many Region 2 affiliates, Zamora & the Protest Suppression Operation were a "one-two punch" of regional insensitivity.
Is NCFCA Still A National League?
Looking back at the circumstances surrounding the '08 National Championship, it is clear that this sequence of events was a source of division between the national leadership & the many Region 2 affiliates let down by the "Big Switcheroo". It is also clear that the seeds of the Bob Jones protest were planted at the Zamora Temple.
Given the cultural disconnect between the geographically imbalanced national leadership & Region 2 affiliates, and the clear trend of moving NCFCA tournaments of national scope as far away from California as possible, one has to consider the question:
Does NCFCA still aspire to be a national league?
*Those who chose to stay that night were rewarded with one of the worst meals in the history of the league. This also led to the joke, circulated that summer, that the reason Region 2's bid for the '08 Nationals was turned down was because Irvine doesn't have a "Zamora Temple".
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
National Opens
I think almost everyone is happy with the National Opens. As noted in other posts, these tournaments reintroduced interstate competition to NCFCA & allow competitors to learn the styles of different regions across the country.
I know of several families who are interested in affiliating with NCFCA this year solely for the purpose of participating in the National Opens (i.e.- based on the assumption that there will be no NCFCA competition in Region 2).
I know of several families who are interested in affiliating with NCFCA this year solely for the purpose of participating in the National Opens (i.e.- based on the assumption that there will be no NCFCA competition in Region 2).
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Orientation
Orientation is another example of where the national leadership has provoked consternation among the Region 2 affiliates. Personally, I believe this is a case where the leadership's initiative was in the best interest of the country overall. Like the previous posts, this will attempt to provide some history, so both positions can be clearly understood.
Problems of Early Years
An orienter can have a tangible impact on a tournament, for better or worse or both, and there are many horror stories from the early years of the league. One key problem is "injection", where the orienter's view of the event and/or resolution is imprinted on the judge pool. It is natural for those fulfilling this role to have strong opinions about the event, this is why tournament directors are drawn to choose them in the first place. Often, a coach is selected, and in the worst case one winds up with a judge pool that has just been pointed in the direction of that coach's own students -- after all, they're the ones doing it "right"!
A second problem is most common among community judges and new parents. The orienter is their "gateway" to the event, sort of an advance tour guide. Any competitors who operate outside the orientation (or even worse -- appear to contradict it), have to be wrong! Parents who commit to the activity will eventually overcome this barrier, but many community judges only see one tournament a year.
A third problem is an extension of this "tour guide" mentality, and this occurs after the round is over. The novice judge has gone through their first orientation, and the round itself has produced something unexpected. Naturally, they go back to the hospitality area to ask their "tour guide" what they should make of this. I was once at a tiny round-robin given by a new club that we were visiting. All the parents were new that year, and one of the coaches had given the orientation. These parents would then come back to the ballot area at the end of the round, explain what they had seen, and the orienteer would then tell them how to vote! Naturally it is critical that orienters avoid this kind of intervention, focusing instead on making the novice judge comfortable with reaching their own decision.
A fourth problem is also rooted in the expertise of the orienter, and is really more of an issue with team policy. They may be a coach or an alumni, they may have a past experience with the dreaded "community judge ballot" (i.e.- someone who wasn't smart enough to vote their way), and now is their chance to fix the universe by stuffing all their superior knowledge down the throats of the judge pool whether they can digest it or not. There's a very simple rule of thumb: the longer the orientation lasts, the less capable the first time judge will feel.
My favorite horror story is from a team policy round robin many years ago. Some alumni were putting on this little fall warmup tournament at a church school, and they had recruited an alumni coach to do the team policy orientation. For round 1, they used experienced parent judges, and packed the judge hospitality area (and ballot workroom) with all the community judges & new parents. The orientation started at 8:30 just before round 1 went off at 9. We waited...and waited...
By 10:00, many of the novice debates were finished, and round 1 judges were working on ballots outside the hospitality room. By 10:30, I had been in and out of the orientation a couple of times, and I realized that there was no sign of closure: we had a hostage crisis on our hands.
I met with the alumni directing the tournament at tab, we gathered up the round 2 ballots and crashed the orientation, passing them out as we fanned across the room. Some of the audience had looks of terror in their eyes as they headed out to their debate rounds, clutching their ballot in dread. The orienter never stopped talking, he was actually performing textual analysis on the wording of the resolution at that point. I kept my last ballot and headed off to listen to some debaters instead.
Region 2 Solves The Issue
Shortly after the "Round Robin Judge Pool Hostage Crisis" incident, Region 2 began the practice of having coaches from the major clubs tour the state and provide orientation services on behalf of the smaller events. This proved to be no hardship, as there was always someone qualified going to the tournament anyway. There was no standardization of these presentations, but there was no dissatisfaction about this either, because each training was a reflection of the rich complexity of Speech and Debate from the point of view of a long term Region 2 coach from a major club. In fact, it was common for new parents to seek out the orienters they had yet to hear, just for enrichment. At one of the last Point Loma tournaments, the orientation responsibility was even rotated between major clubs from round to round! These orientations tended to last 30-45 minutes, striking a balance between timeliness and proper equipping.
Although these orientations had stylistic differences, there were some common elements:
It is important to note that California's work on this problem began years before the national organization decided to standardize orientation across the league; and once the national leadership began to move on the problem, Region 2 had snuffed out any problematic manifestations with a settled system in place.
NCFCA Solves The Issue
The orientation slides of NCFCA were first deployed at the Seattle Open. After a brief window of feedback, the standardization process began, which continues to this day.
The slides themselves provoked a firestorm of reaction within California, although the negative response was not universal. All five of the key points listed above were met by the orientation slides. Initially, people were not attracted to the idea of visual training for an auditory competition, but with the passage of time these concerns have proven to be misplaced. The community judges themselves like the slides, and this promoted acceptance. There is some objection to the distracting nature of the multiformat debate slides for single-format tournaments, i.e.- if you're running a team policy tournament, why would you want to confuse a community judge with a sample LD ballot? But this is a localized problem that doesn't happen at most tournaments. One shortcoming that has never been addressed is the lack of emphasis on written feedback to the debaters.
One cannot perform a just evaluation of the slides, however, in isolation, or be overly critical of small issues. It is important to remember what was being replaced: a horror show played out at tournaments all across the country where judge pools were being misoriented and the competitors suffering with the results. From this point of view, the national orientation initiative was badly needed & must be sustained. I believe this is one of the most important and positive changes the current national leadership has ever accomplished.
But there is one central objection which cannot be denied. In order to create a common denominator acceptable to the nation as a whole, almost all significant theory content has been drained out of the slides. This is clearly evident by the aggressive timelines achieved by the standardization initiative: about 20 minutes or less for orientation, and this is compounded by the ban on open questions.
By eliminating theory content, the judges orientation as now practiced by the league no longer meets the goal of giving the new, incoming parent a "boost" in their learning curve of the events. This need must be met elsewhere, and the hardship of this burden falls on the new clubs & their new families. Fortunately, incoming competitors to Region 2 find a sense of community & openness, and not just an atmosphere of intense, focused competition -- but they get that, too.
Region 2 and the Orientation Initiative
I will repeat my claim that the national leadership's orientation initiative was an important and positive step for the league as a whole; but many affiliates in California viewed this transition as a pure detrimental loss to the state, taking away something we still need today in order to solve a problem we didn't have. To the credit of the Region 2 leadership, this transition was accomplished in submission to the national organization, despite the controversy, and slide-based orientation has been the general practice in Region 2 to this day.
Problems of Early Years
An orienter can have a tangible impact on a tournament, for better or worse or both, and there are many horror stories from the early years of the league. One key problem is "injection", where the orienter's view of the event and/or resolution is imprinted on the judge pool. It is natural for those fulfilling this role to have strong opinions about the event, this is why tournament directors are drawn to choose them in the first place. Often, a coach is selected, and in the worst case one winds up with a judge pool that has just been pointed in the direction of that coach's own students -- after all, they're the ones doing it "right"!
A second problem is most common among community judges and new parents. The orienter is their "gateway" to the event, sort of an advance tour guide. Any competitors who operate outside the orientation (or even worse -- appear to contradict it), have to be wrong! Parents who commit to the activity will eventually overcome this barrier, but many community judges only see one tournament a year.
A third problem is an extension of this "tour guide" mentality, and this occurs after the round is over. The novice judge has gone through their first orientation, and the round itself has produced something unexpected. Naturally, they go back to the hospitality area to ask their "tour guide" what they should make of this. I was once at a tiny round-robin given by a new club that we were visiting. All the parents were new that year, and one of the coaches had given the orientation. These parents would then come back to the ballot area at the end of the round, explain what they had seen, and the orienteer would then tell them how to vote! Naturally it is critical that orienters avoid this kind of intervention, focusing instead on making the novice judge comfortable with reaching their own decision.
A fourth problem is also rooted in the expertise of the orienter, and is really more of an issue with team policy. They may be a coach or an alumni, they may have a past experience with the dreaded "community judge ballot" (i.e.- someone who wasn't smart enough to vote their way), and now is their chance to fix the universe by stuffing all their superior knowledge down the throats of the judge pool whether they can digest it or not. There's a very simple rule of thumb: the longer the orientation lasts, the less capable the first time judge will feel.
My favorite horror story is from a team policy round robin many years ago. Some alumni were putting on this little fall warmup tournament at a church school, and they had recruited an alumni coach to do the team policy orientation. For round 1, they used experienced parent judges, and packed the judge hospitality area (and ballot workroom) with all the community judges & new parents. The orientation started at 8:30 just before round 1 went off at 9. We waited...and waited...
By 10:00, many of the novice debates were finished, and round 1 judges were working on ballots outside the hospitality room. By 10:30, I had been in and out of the orientation a couple of times, and I realized that there was no sign of closure: we had a hostage crisis on our hands.
I met with the alumni directing the tournament at tab, we gathered up the round 2 ballots and crashed the orientation, passing them out as we fanned across the room. Some of the audience had looks of terror in their eyes as they headed out to their debate rounds, clutching their ballot in dread. The orienter never stopped talking, he was actually performing textual analysis on the wording of the resolution at that point. I kept my last ballot and headed off to listen to some debaters instead.
Region 2 Solves The Issue
Shortly after the "Round Robin Judge Pool Hostage Crisis" incident, Region 2 began the practice of having coaches from the major clubs tour the state and provide orientation services on behalf of the smaller events. This proved to be no hardship, as there was always someone qualified going to the tournament anyway. There was no standardization of these presentations, but there was no dissatisfaction about this either, because each training was a reflection of the rich complexity of Speech and Debate from the point of view of a long term Region 2 coach from a major club. In fact, it was common for new parents to seek out the orienters they had yet to hear, just for enrichment. At one of the last Point Loma tournaments, the orientation responsibility was even rotated between major clubs from round to round! These orientations tended to last 30-45 minutes, striking a balance between timeliness and proper equipping.
Although these orientations had stylistic differences, there were some common elements:
- make the judge comfortable with their abilities and competence to evaluate the round
- place responsibility for clarity on the competitors
- avoid the problem of "injection", be neutral towards differences between the competitors
- move quickly through the round structure & any theory, avoid overwhelming the new judge with too many details.
- express gratitude for volunteering to judge speech & debate!
It is important to note that California's work on this problem began years before the national organization decided to standardize orientation across the league; and once the national leadership began to move on the problem, Region 2 had snuffed out any problematic manifestations with a settled system in place.
NCFCA Solves The Issue
The orientation slides of NCFCA were first deployed at the Seattle Open. After a brief window of feedback, the standardization process began, which continues to this day.
The slides themselves provoked a firestorm of reaction within California, although the negative response was not universal. All five of the key points listed above were met by the orientation slides. Initially, people were not attracted to the idea of visual training for an auditory competition, but with the passage of time these concerns have proven to be misplaced. The community judges themselves like the slides, and this promoted acceptance. There is some objection to the distracting nature of the multiformat debate slides for single-format tournaments, i.e.- if you're running a team policy tournament, why would you want to confuse a community judge with a sample LD ballot? But this is a localized problem that doesn't happen at most tournaments. One shortcoming that has never been addressed is the lack of emphasis on written feedback to the debaters.
One cannot perform a just evaluation of the slides, however, in isolation, or be overly critical of small issues. It is important to remember what was being replaced: a horror show played out at tournaments all across the country where judge pools were being misoriented and the competitors suffering with the results. From this point of view, the national orientation initiative was badly needed & must be sustained. I believe this is one of the most important and positive changes the current national leadership has ever accomplished.
But there is one central objection which cannot be denied. In order to create a common denominator acceptable to the nation as a whole, almost all significant theory content has been drained out of the slides. This is clearly evident by the aggressive timelines achieved by the standardization initiative: about 20 minutes or less for orientation, and this is compounded by the ban on open questions.
By eliminating theory content, the judges orientation as now practiced by the league no longer meets the goal of giving the new, incoming parent a "boost" in their learning curve of the events. This need must be met elsewhere, and the hardship of this burden falls on the new clubs & their new families. Fortunately, incoming competitors to Region 2 find a sense of community & openness, and not just an atmosphere of intense, focused competition -- but they get that, too.
Region 2 and the Orientation Initiative
I will repeat my claim that the national leadership's orientation initiative was an important and positive step for the league as a whole; but many affiliates in California viewed this transition as a pure detrimental loss to the state, taking away something we still need today in order to solve a problem we didn't have. To the credit of the Region 2 leadership, this transition was accomplished in submission to the national organization, despite the controversy, and slide-based orientation has been the general practice in Region 2 to this day.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Cancelled Events?
The NCFCA president sent an announcement that Expos and OI are both "suspended" (?) in NCFCA next year, but other events will replace them later.
I guess that's the ultimate rule change. But at least the change was announced during the summer!
I guess that's the ultimate rule change. But at least the change was announced during the summer!
Changing the IE Rules?
Someone posted a comment regarding NCFCA's mid-season rule changes for IEs. This has happened twice in the past three years.
Last time this happened, word was passed down that "it won't happen again", but this year the rules were changed right before the Regional. Many people were very upset about this.
One event that was very disrupted by this last minute rule change was Expos. There was an Expos family that suffered tremendous grief getting their boards to Bob Jones this year in a way that complied with the new rules, the boards couldn't be checked as baggage and they almost had to charter their own plane.
After all that hassle, they show up in South Carolina. This year Expos got the Extemp treatment (i.e.- all prelim rounds on the first day, before everything else). With nothing else to do, this family watched all the Expos rounds and came out to report that none of the competitors were following the new rules & it wasn't clear that any of the judges even cared.
"Well of course not," I told them, "the orientation's only 20 minutes long, how are they going to explain a bunch of new Expos rules?" Then I reminded the parent that IF their child makes it to outrounds, being in compliance will be a good thing, because as the judge pool expands they are more likely to run into a judge who actually knows the rule change.
I guess the team policy equivalent of an IE rule change in late April would be rewording the resolution after the qualifiers were over?
Some blog posters outside of Region 2 seem to believe that the "Stoa" transition is the desire of one person or a small number of people? This is completely untrue. In fact, there is widespread exasperation among the rank and file affiliates, and these repeated mid-season rule changes in the IE events are a major stimulus.
Last time this happened, word was passed down that "it won't happen again", but this year the rules were changed right before the Regional. Many people were very upset about this.
One event that was very disrupted by this last minute rule change was Expos. There was an Expos family that suffered tremendous grief getting their boards to Bob Jones this year in a way that complied with the new rules, the boards couldn't be checked as baggage and they almost had to charter their own plane.
After all that hassle, they show up in South Carolina. This year Expos got the Extemp treatment (i.e.- all prelim rounds on the first day, before everything else). With nothing else to do, this family watched all the Expos rounds and came out to report that none of the competitors were following the new rules & it wasn't clear that any of the judges even cared.
"Well of course not," I told them, "the orientation's only 20 minutes long, how are they going to explain a bunch of new Expos rules?" Then I reminded the parent that IF their child makes it to outrounds, being in compliance will be a good thing, because as the judge pool expands they are more likely to run into a judge who actually knows the rule change.
I guess the team policy equivalent of an IE rule change in late April would be rewording the resolution after the qualifiers were over?
Some blog posters outside of Region 2 seem to believe that the "Stoa" transition is the desire of one person or a small number of people? This is completely untrue. In fact, there is widespread exasperation among the rank and file affiliates, and these repeated mid-season rule changes in the IE events are a major stimulus.
Stoa Quip
Summary of the Stoa/sabbatical situation, from a Region 2 alumni:
"The counterplan is the status quo."
Brilliant.
"The counterplan is the status quo."
Brilliant.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Trophies
Trophies are a topic of some controversy in NCFCA. One of the great aspects of the early National Opens were the individualized trophies, especially the Opens hosted in Region 3. However most of these tournaments also included speeches by the national leadership discussing the fleeting nature of trophies.
As a theological question, the point is sound: a trophy should not become an idol.
Yet trophies are distributed, and therefore must also serve as an acknowledgment of achievement.
These speeches always refer to the "box" or even boxes of trophies which have accumulated over a student's career. Of course this is true for the handful of families in NCFCA who dominate competition at the highest levels (including the talented and dedicated children of the national leadership). Yet for every family at the top, there are 10 families who have never been to Nationals, never will go, most of whom complete their careers with an empty box. Is it really a moral failing to try to steer a trophy or two to those competitors who peak at semis/double-octos?
The trend in NCFCA, consistent with the rhetoric, has been to reduce the number of trophies. The National Opens began the trend by substituting medals for trophies some years back. At the Texas Nationals a major step was taken when the triple octofinalists were given paper certificates. At an after party, this was excused by some as an expediency of the moment, the two triple-octos teams being unexpected breaks. Yet was this an accident? The trend was significantly expanded at the South Carolina nationals where paper certificates were created at the podium for some of the lower breaks -- despite the fact that the very highest breaks got large, oversized trophies.
Rumor has it that in NCFCA '09/'10, trophies will be banned at all tournaments below the level of Regionals.
This policy paradox fails to understand a basic element of human nature: desirability is stimulated by scarcity. If there was really a problem with coveting trophies at NCFCA tournaments, the solution would be to spray trophies over as much of the field as possible & thereby make them seem cheap.
As a theological question, the point is sound: a trophy should not become an idol.
Yet trophies are distributed, and therefore must also serve as an acknowledgment of achievement.
These speeches always refer to the "box" or even boxes of trophies which have accumulated over a student's career. Of course this is true for the handful of families in NCFCA who dominate competition at the highest levels (including the talented and dedicated children of the national leadership). Yet for every family at the top, there are 10 families who have never been to Nationals, never will go, most of whom complete their careers with an empty box. Is it really a moral failing to try to steer a trophy or two to those competitors who peak at semis/double-octos?
The trend in NCFCA, consistent with the rhetoric, has been to reduce the number of trophies. The National Opens began the trend by substituting medals for trophies some years back. At the Texas Nationals a major step was taken when the triple octofinalists were given paper certificates. At an after party, this was excused by some as an expediency of the moment, the two triple-octos teams being unexpected breaks. Yet was this an accident? The trend was significantly expanded at the South Carolina nationals where paper certificates were created at the podium for some of the lower breaks -- despite the fact that the very highest breaks got large, oversized trophies.
Rumor has it that in NCFCA '09/'10, trophies will be banned at all tournaments below the level of Regionals.
This policy paradox fails to understand a basic element of human nature: desirability is stimulated by scarcity. If there was really a problem with coveting trophies at NCFCA tournaments, the solution would be to spray trophies over as much of the field as possible & thereby make them seem cheap.
California Begins Again
This week is the traditional start of the competitive season in California: the Santa Clara University debate camp.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
HISTORY OF THE REGIONAL MODEL IN NCFCA
THE HISTORY OF THE REGIONAL MODEL IN NCFCA
One Parent's Witness
I've now completed my twelfth season of judging speech and debate in NCFCA. From the earliest days of what is now called Region 2, competition was very intense in California; and through this intense competition students developed their skills, allowing them to move on to success in college and in life.
Problems in the Early Days
In the early days of what was originally called the HSLDA Home School Speech & Debate league, all tournaments were open, a practice that California carried into NCFCA. Californians welcomed competitors from across the country, and also took advantage of tournaments in the rest of the country to qualify for Nationals. California also hosted the first two Nationals after NCFCA was formed.
I went to judge one of these early Nationals, I didn't have any children competing but I wanted to help out. I was very surprised, I was expecting the competition to be elevated above that found at our local tournaments, after all this was the National Championship. But it wasn't, in fact, the teams I saw wouldn't have qualified in California.
By the time of the Liberty Nationals, I had a child competing and spent the whole week writing ballots, including a couple of outrounds, giving me a chance to get a firsthand sense of the field. I didn't have a clear picture of the rest of the country, and I was shocked to learn that week that almost 40 states were running closed championships with direct qualifying slots. I cannot imagine why all these tournaments were closed up -- unless it was a desire to see local teams going to Nationals, instead of qualifying out-of-towners like the Carpetbaggers from California.
One of those teams was at our hotel, they were the State Champions of New Mexico. In order to gain that honor, they had been to one tournament with eight teams. The Liberty Nationals was their second tournament, in their entire debate career. At that time, California was running 10-12 tournaments per year with open qualifiers, and my own child had debated over 100 tournament rounds before qualifying. I don't know specifically how the New Mexico State Champions did at Liberty, for all I know they went 6-0 in prelims; but it's a reasonable expectation that any team facing a National Varsity field in their second tournament would get shredded based on their lack of experience.
While at that tournament, I got to judge some great teams from across the country, I can also say that about a third of the field at the Liberty Nationals was equivalent quality to the California novice track. They were National Varsity in name, but they just weren't getting the opportunity to compete & develop their skills.
NCFCA Addresses the Issues
After this, two changes were put in place by the national leadership of NCFCA: the Regional Model, and the National Open system. Both of these changes had the effect of reintroducing interstate competition to NCFCA and improving the quality of competitors at the National Championship.
Part of the Regional Model was the idea of grouping smaller states into a region, in order to create a critical mass of competition. Also, by creating a Regional Qualifier, this introduced another large tournament into the calendars of those parts of the country which lacked opportunities to compete.
Since Liberty, I've been to all of the Nationals except for one, and I can say that the effect on the quality of the field was immediate and lasting. That bottom third of the field has been replaced by competent competitors. The National Opens have all been great tournaments and have allowed people to form friendships across the country. From the point of view of the league as a whole, these changes have been a raving success, and those members of the NCFCA leadership who envisioned and drove these changes are to be commended.
Let me be explicit on the definition of success: the key goal of NCFCA is to prepare home schooled children to impact the world for Christ by developing the presentation and interpersonal skills that are the natural fruit of competitive speech and debate. For this reason, effective competition that identifies and acknowledges excellence is the key tactic in service of this strategic goal. Fellowship within the league is also a key goal, just as is fellowship a purpose of the Church.
However, now we must turn to the part of the story that only a Californian can share, because the experience of the Regional Model by Region 2 within Region 2 has been almost entirely detrimental.
The Regional Model in California
One of the first changes that was imposed by the NCFCA leadership on Region 2 was to close all our qualifiers. This was initially a grevious change for our families, as we had always welcomed the chance to act as hosts for the rest of the country. However, as time has gone forward, our tournaments have become so large & the search for adequate venues so difficult that it is questionable how many teams from outside of California we can accomodate anymore. If given the opportunity, I am sure we would try to find a way to make it work & reopen our tournaments.
The next point of contention between Region 2 and the NCFCA national leadership was the idea of a single Regional qualifier as a "gateway" tournament to Nationals. The Region 2 objection from the start to this idea was that using a single tournament to determine all the national slots was a bad idea. What if your best competitor gets sick, or gets a bad ballot or two?
Well, after a couple of years on the Regional Model, the national leadership realized that the "big bang" approach to selecting slots was a bad idea after all (just as the Californians had been saying). As a result, the Regional Model was modified to add the "At Large" point system.
It's important here to inject another aspect of the California system. In Region 2, pre-qualified debate teams don't break. Note the key detail which distinguishes debate from speech: there's a winner and a loser in each round. Avoiding the breaks for pre-qual teams removes the temptation of "taking a dive" in an outround to help their friends qualify. In fact, at the later qualifiers, pre-qual teams are given their own out-round ladder, so they can stay sharp without affecting the outcome of the qualifying track. California teams also took this policy into the National Opens, where it initially caused some conflict but was eventually accepted as an enhancement to integrity.
The reason this digression into the California culture is relevant is because after another couple of years with the modified Regional Model & at-large point system, the national leadership realized they had another problem with the system: knowledge affects behavior. The formula for calculating at-large points was leaked onto homeschooldebate.com and entire blog threads spring up every year on that forum tracing down every last decimal point on all the plausible contenders. Now, one point of view might be that transparency & accountability is a good thing, however it is also true that knowing the points and placings that everybody needs to qualify will present a trans-region temptation to the entire competitive community. I can't say for certain it is this effect which drove the national leadership to express themselves "grieved" over the public awareness of the "At Large" formula, but is is clear that even the modified Regional Model still has issues.
Once again, we come back to the what we can call the "California System" as an alternative: qualifying slots for Nationals through direct competition. The California qualifiers are routinely larger than all the National Opens, indeed Region 2 families who were told that this year's Texas Open was "the biggest NCFCA tournament in history" were a little perplexed, since the last Region 2 qualifier at Point Loma included 141 policy teams, and Region 2 has never rationed registration for Improptu.
It isn't just that the California system avoids all the growing pains that the Regional Model has experienced since it was introduced. And it also isn't just a matter of size for the Region 2 qualifiers. One also has to look back at the original problem the Regional Model solved: improving the quality of competition in NCFCA. Is anyone willing to assert that California has exhibited difficulty developing quality NCFCA competitors for national competition?
The "Grand Compromise"
After several years of fairly intense pressure from the national organization to conform, the leadership of Region 2 circulated a compromise regional plan for '08/'09 that included "at large" slots for the first time. It is important to emphasize the transparency and servant's attitude of the Region 2 leadership throughout this process. Opposition to the "big bang qualifier" attribute of the Regional Model has always run very deep among the parents of Region 2, and in resisting the imposition of this attribute the Region 2 leadership has merely reflected the desires of the California affiliates.
The "Grand Compromise" of '08/'09 took several significant steps toward conforming to the Regional Model:
* four "at large" slots held back to award via the point system
* early qualifiers cut back from 4 slots to just 2
* the Regional Championship (i.e.- final qualifier) slot count expanded beyond 4
(note: these changes describe the details of TP debate, IEs & LD were changed in similar ways)
Compared to previous years, the "Grand Compromise" met the Regional Model more than 1/2 way. There were a few interesting aspects of using this new system. First of all, Californians got a chance to see firsthand the aspects of the "At Large" point system which the national leadership found grievous. Second, somewhat surprisingly, the "At Large" system didn't really affect who went to Nationals, at least in debate: the teams that were awarded "At Large" slots pretty much all would have qualified under the old system. IEs are subject to more variability, but the California qualifiers are so enormous that top finishers come into the Regional with near insurmountable point leads.
The final impact of the "Grand Compromise" was direct and burdensome to all affliates, but takes a little explanation. As stated repeatedly, California tournaments are enormous. In debate, we routinely break to triple-octos. In some IE events, we wind up with three or more rooms for semis. By the time we reach a "qualifying round" in debate, California practice is to stop the tournament and resolve the top four placings via prelim seedings. By cutting the number of slots in half for our "early qualifiers", this tacked an additional two hours onto our tournament schedules. As a result, tournaments that used to end at 9 PM wound up running to midnight on the last day, and tournaments that used to take three days are dilated out to four. This cuts down the participation by dads in the judge pool, drives up the cost of competition, & burns everyone out even more than usual. Another negative side effect is the greater temptation for affiliates who aren't involved in the breaks to take off & avoid staying for the awards ceremony, which has a direct impact on the parental component of the outround judge pool and further delays the tournaments.
Replacing the "Grand Compromise" with the full regional model would impose an additional 2-3 hours per qualifier. This would have the effect of extending our 10 round tournaments into 12 round tournaments over a two-year period.
Perhaps the worst part of the "Grand Compromise" has been the negative reaction to the '08/'09 regional plan by the national leadership. The parents of Region 2 feel they have gone more than half-way to meet the directive to conform, making real and tangible sacrifices in the process. The response by the national leadership is apparently binary: full implementation of the entire regional model, without deviations, is the only acceptable outcome.
The Purpose of Pressure?
One may ask, why is conformity on this issue so important to the national leadership? Maybe it makes it easier for the leadership to enforce conformity on the rest of the country when there aren't prominent exceptions. It would have been pretty easy to finesse this issue by making a simple exception for "single state regions", or a size limit could have been instituted for early qualifiers. A more prosaic articulation might have acknowledged Califonia's tendency to creative innovation in the face of unique circumstances, as well as Region 2's long history with running massive tournaments.
Let us return again to the central purpose of NCFCA: to prepare home schooled children to impact the world for Christ by developing the presentation and interpersonal skills that are the natural fruit of competitive speech and debate. We assert that all the variants of qualifying seasons practiced in California have adequately served this goal.
Pressure to conform to the regional model has been a source of division between Region 2 and the national leadership. This post is an attempt to explain why overall the regional model has been a good thing for the league as a whole, and also why the regional model is viewed so negatively by the affiliates of Region 2.
-A Region Two Parent
One Parent's Witness
I've now completed my twelfth season of judging speech and debate in NCFCA. From the earliest days of what is now called Region 2, competition was very intense in California; and through this intense competition students developed their skills, allowing them to move on to success in college and in life.
Problems in the Early Days
In the early days of what was originally called the HSLDA Home School Speech & Debate league, all tournaments were open, a practice that California carried into NCFCA. Californians welcomed competitors from across the country, and also took advantage of tournaments in the rest of the country to qualify for Nationals. California also hosted the first two Nationals after NCFCA was formed.
I went to judge one of these early Nationals, I didn't have any children competing but I wanted to help out. I was very surprised, I was expecting the competition to be elevated above that found at our local tournaments, after all this was the National Championship. But it wasn't, in fact, the teams I saw wouldn't have qualified in California.
By the time of the Liberty Nationals, I had a child competing and spent the whole week writing ballots, including a couple of outrounds, giving me a chance to get a firsthand sense of the field. I didn't have a clear picture of the rest of the country, and I was shocked to learn that week that almost 40 states were running closed championships with direct qualifying slots. I cannot imagine why all these tournaments were closed up -- unless it was a desire to see local teams going to Nationals, instead of qualifying out-of-towners like the Carpetbaggers from California.
One of those teams was at our hotel, they were the State Champions of New Mexico. In order to gain that honor, they had been to one tournament with eight teams. The Liberty Nationals was their second tournament, in their entire debate career. At that time, California was running 10-12 tournaments per year with open qualifiers, and my own child had debated over 100 tournament rounds before qualifying. I don't know specifically how the New Mexico State Champions did at Liberty, for all I know they went 6-0 in prelims; but it's a reasonable expectation that any team facing a National Varsity field in their second tournament would get shredded based on their lack of experience.
While at that tournament, I got to judge some great teams from across the country, I can also say that about a third of the field at the Liberty Nationals was equivalent quality to the California novice track. They were National Varsity in name, but they just weren't getting the opportunity to compete & develop their skills.
NCFCA Addresses the Issues
After this, two changes were put in place by the national leadership of NCFCA: the Regional Model, and the National Open system. Both of these changes had the effect of reintroducing interstate competition to NCFCA and improving the quality of competitors at the National Championship.
Part of the Regional Model was the idea of grouping smaller states into a region, in order to create a critical mass of competition. Also, by creating a Regional Qualifier, this introduced another large tournament into the calendars of those parts of the country which lacked opportunities to compete.
Since Liberty, I've been to all of the Nationals except for one, and I can say that the effect on the quality of the field was immediate and lasting. That bottom third of the field has been replaced by competent competitors. The National Opens have all been great tournaments and have allowed people to form friendships across the country. From the point of view of the league as a whole, these changes have been a raving success, and those members of the NCFCA leadership who envisioned and drove these changes are to be commended.
Let me be explicit on the definition of success: the key goal of NCFCA is to prepare home schooled children to impact the world for Christ by developing the presentation and interpersonal skills that are the natural fruit of competitive speech and debate. For this reason, effective competition that identifies and acknowledges excellence is the key tactic in service of this strategic goal. Fellowship within the league is also a key goal, just as is fellowship a purpose of the Church.
However, now we must turn to the part of the story that only a Californian can share, because the experience of the Regional Model by Region 2 within Region 2 has been almost entirely detrimental.
The Regional Model in California
One of the first changes that was imposed by the NCFCA leadership on Region 2 was to close all our qualifiers. This was initially a grevious change for our families, as we had always welcomed the chance to act as hosts for the rest of the country. However, as time has gone forward, our tournaments have become so large & the search for adequate venues so difficult that it is questionable how many teams from outside of California we can accomodate anymore. If given the opportunity, I am sure we would try to find a way to make it work & reopen our tournaments.
The next point of contention between Region 2 and the NCFCA national leadership was the idea of a single Regional qualifier as a "gateway" tournament to Nationals. The Region 2 objection from the start to this idea was that using a single tournament to determine all the national slots was a bad idea. What if your best competitor gets sick, or gets a bad ballot or two?
Well, after a couple of years on the Regional Model, the national leadership realized that the "big bang" approach to selecting slots was a bad idea after all (just as the Californians had been saying). As a result, the Regional Model was modified to add the "At Large" point system.
It's important here to inject another aspect of the California system. In Region 2, pre-qualified debate teams don't break. Note the key detail which distinguishes debate from speech: there's a winner and a loser in each round. Avoiding the breaks for pre-qual teams removes the temptation of "taking a dive" in an outround to help their friends qualify. In fact, at the later qualifiers, pre-qual teams are given their own out-round ladder, so they can stay sharp without affecting the outcome of the qualifying track. California teams also took this policy into the National Opens, where it initially caused some conflict but was eventually accepted as an enhancement to integrity.
The reason this digression into the California culture is relevant is because after another couple of years with the modified Regional Model & at-large point system, the national leadership realized they had another problem with the system: knowledge affects behavior. The formula for calculating at-large points was leaked onto homeschooldebate.com and entire blog threads spring up every year on that forum tracing down every last decimal point on all the plausible contenders. Now, one point of view might be that transparency & accountability is a good thing, however it is also true that knowing the points and placings that everybody needs to qualify will present a trans-region temptation to the entire competitive community. I can't say for certain it is this effect which drove the national leadership to express themselves "grieved" over the public awareness of the "At Large" formula, but is is clear that even the modified Regional Model still has issues.
Once again, we come back to the what we can call the "California System" as an alternative: qualifying slots for Nationals through direct competition. The California qualifiers are routinely larger than all the National Opens, indeed Region 2 families who were told that this year's Texas Open was "the biggest NCFCA tournament in history" were a little perplexed, since the last Region 2 qualifier at Point Loma included 141 policy teams, and Region 2 has never rationed registration for Improptu.
It isn't just that the California system avoids all the growing pains that the Regional Model has experienced since it was introduced. And it also isn't just a matter of size for the Region 2 qualifiers. One also has to look back at the original problem the Regional Model solved: improving the quality of competition in NCFCA. Is anyone willing to assert that California has exhibited difficulty developing quality NCFCA competitors for national competition?
The "Grand Compromise"
After several years of fairly intense pressure from the national organization to conform, the leadership of Region 2 circulated a compromise regional plan for '08/'09 that included "at large" slots for the first time. It is important to emphasize the transparency and servant's attitude of the Region 2 leadership throughout this process. Opposition to the "big bang qualifier" attribute of the Regional Model has always run very deep among the parents of Region 2, and in resisting the imposition of this attribute the Region 2 leadership has merely reflected the desires of the California affiliates.
The "Grand Compromise" of '08/'09 took several significant steps toward conforming to the Regional Model:
* four "at large" slots held back to award via the point system
* early qualifiers cut back from 4 slots to just 2
* the Regional Championship (i.e.- final qualifier) slot count expanded beyond 4
(note: these changes describe the details of TP debate, IEs & LD were changed in similar ways)
Compared to previous years, the "Grand Compromise" met the Regional Model more than 1/2 way. There were a few interesting aspects of using this new system. First of all, Californians got a chance to see firsthand the aspects of the "At Large" point system which the national leadership found grievous. Second, somewhat surprisingly, the "At Large" system didn't really affect who went to Nationals, at least in debate: the teams that were awarded "At Large" slots pretty much all would have qualified under the old system. IEs are subject to more variability, but the California qualifiers are so enormous that top finishers come into the Regional with near insurmountable point leads.
The final impact of the "Grand Compromise" was direct and burdensome to all affliates, but takes a little explanation. As stated repeatedly, California tournaments are enormous. In debate, we routinely break to triple-octos. In some IE events, we wind up with three or more rooms for semis. By the time we reach a "qualifying round" in debate, California practice is to stop the tournament and resolve the top four placings via prelim seedings. By cutting the number of slots in half for our "early qualifiers", this tacked an additional two hours onto our tournament schedules. As a result, tournaments that used to end at 9 PM wound up running to midnight on the last day, and tournaments that used to take three days are dilated out to four. This cuts down the participation by dads in the judge pool, drives up the cost of competition, & burns everyone out even more than usual. Another negative side effect is the greater temptation for affiliates who aren't involved in the breaks to take off & avoid staying for the awards ceremony, which has a direct impact on the parental component of the outround judge pool and further delays the tournaments.
Replacing the "Grand Compromise" with the full regional model would impose an additional 2-3 hours per qualifier. This would have the effect of extending our 10 round tournaments into 12 round tournaments over a two-year period.
Perhaps the worst part of the "Grand Compromise" has been the negative reaction to the '08/'09 regional plan by the national leadership. The parents of Region 2 feel they have gone more than half-way to meet the directive to conform, making real and tangible sacrifices in the process. The response by the national leadership is apparently binary: full implementation of the entire regional model, without deviations, is the only acceptable outcome.
The Purpose of Pressure?
One may ask, why is conformity on this issue so important to the national leadership? Maybe it makes it easier for the leadership to enforce conformity on the rest of the country when there aren't prominent exceptions. It would have been pretty easy to finesse this issue by making a simple exception for "single state regions", or a size limit could have been instituted for early qualifiers. A more prosaic articulation might have acknowledged Califonia's tendency to creative innovation in the face of unique circumstances, as well as Region 2's long history with running massive tournaments.
Let us return again to the central purpose of NCFCA: to prepare home schooled children to impact the world for Christ by developing the presentation and interpersonal skills that are the natural fruit of competitive speech and debate. We assert that all the variants of qualifying seasons practiced in California have adequately served this goal.
Pressure to conform to the regional model has been a source of division between Region 2 and the national leadership. This post is an attempt to explain why overall the regional model has been a good thing for the league as a whole, and also why the regional model is viewed so negatively by the affiliates of Region 2.
-A Region Two Parent
This blog is intended for commentary on NCFCA, from the perspective of a Region 2 parent.
The views expressed in this blog are solely the views of the author.
Our family loves the competitors and families of Region 2, and we have been very grateful for the opportunity to compete in NCFCA, where we have met great competitors and their families from all over the country.
The views expressed in this blog are solely the views of the author.
Our family loves the competitors and families of Region 2, and we have been very grateful for the opportunity to compete in NCFCA, where we have met great competitors and their families from all over the country.
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