Wisconsin Forensics Daily

Monday Meditation: WSDT

As you may have heard during the award cermonies of several tournaments, coaches are no longer announcing qualifiers to the State Tournament of Champions. Instead, coaches are announcing qualifiers to the Wisconsin State Debate Tournament. For many coaches this may seem odd. The Tournament of Champions has been the name of the Debate Coaches tournament for years. This year presents a new development in Wisconsin debate history - a single state tournament.

In the Spring 2006 meeting of the WDCA, the member coaches voted overwhelmingly to accept the proposed changes of the State Tournament of Champions to hold a combined WHSFA and WDCA state tournament. Since 2004 there have been discussions on how to eliminate the redudancy of holding two competitive state tournaments. Some compromises have even made it to the general business meetings of the WDCA (WHSFA runs V4, WDCA runs Switch) - but only to have been defeated by the general membership. The new compromise was just for a single tournament, with WHSFA support and some additional awards in the V4 division.

This compromise is beneficial for several reasons. First, there is one single state debate tournament to decide who is the best in the state. There will no longer be two, or in some cases three, debate champions in any event. This increases the prestige of those awards. Second, there will be additional funding for the tournament. This is a key advantage. Additional funding allows the state to hire accomplished tournament directors and to use more coaches as judges during the state tournament. Two individuals that have already been hired are Bill McBride and Roland Faas. Third, a single tournament with increased prestige leads to increased media coverage. Nick Bubb (me) will lead the WDCA’s Media and Communication Committee (there isn’t one yet) to create full press package. Fourth, a single tournament with increased prestige will attract more and better qualified judges.

Additionally, most snag issues have been avoided. No school needs to join the WHSFA in order to compete in the combined state tournament. The WHSFA district procedure has been dropped in favor of using the tournament qualification that the WDCA had used. To accomidate for WHSFA exception rule, and in the interest of clarity, the WDCA modified its “back-door” qualifying procedure using. Instead of the 10/15 rule that no one agreed on how to interpret, we now use a .500 rule. Teams (four person or two person) must have a .500 record at two tournaments. This rule only works to qualify individuals in a division where you do not have debaters qualified and only extends to one four person team, two switch side or pf pairs, or two LD debaters. The rule is also extended to PF and LD where it previously did not exist.

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