Wisconsin Forensics Daily

1. 59 Responses to “Qualified to State List”

2. Brookfield Central MW (Val McIntosh and Tess Wartman)is qualified in VSS. We qualified at Nicolet.

   By Val McIntosh on Oct 27, 2008

3. Sheboygan South (Cyndi Benz, Myranda Tanck, Danielle Fortin, Jessica Tanck) qualified in “Open 4″ at Brookfield East and will be going in V4 to State.

   By Cyndi Benz on Nov 4, 2008

4. V4 might not be held. The contingency policy is in effect this year.

   In case people forgot. This spring we passed this:

   In the event the Four-Person Varsity Division has insufficient entries to
   administer effectively or to ensure the eventual champion has been sufficiently
   tested by a diverse competition pool, the Tournament Director shall immediately
   notify affected parties that the Four-Person Varsity Division will not be offered at
   the Wisconsin State Debate Tournament for the affected year. The criteria for
   determining if the Division has sufficient entries shall be that the division has
   representation from at least six (6) schools and at least eight (8) teams. The
   Tournament Director shall be responsible for notifying all affected schools that
   the potential exists for invoking the Contingency Policy at the time Registration
   opens and the affected schools shall be responsible for declaring their
   registration intentions to the Tournament Director one (1) week prior to the final
   registration deadline.

   We currently do not meet the criteria established for hosting the division.

   By Nick Bubb on Nov 5, 2008

5. Nick,

   I know there wasn’t too much discussion about this, but has some consideration been given to having an Open Division at WSDT, even for this year? Maybe having 5 rounds as opposed to 6 rounds (a compromise between JV4 and V4 in terms of rounds). And we’ve had to have combined divisions so much this season that people who have qualified/competed in open have also done so in varsity. I still think we could have the WHSFA best sides awards.

   I may have spoken too late as this could be part of the contingency policy, but with not even that many JV teams qualified and the Slinger for example having 2 teams, it may be difficult to run that division as well.

   By Steve Finch on Nov 5, 2008

6. Steve,

   I think there’s going to a number of discussions regarding the WSDT at the Spring Meeting. There has been talk of completely removing the qualification requirements. I have thought of returning to Ken’s idea of eliminating JV.

   The problem is that all of these changes have to be proposed and debated. We are doing a couple of minor things ad hoc this year because of the independent tournament director change necessitated it. The thought was that in the spring we could clean up the SRs related to the independent tournament director.

   By Nick Bubb on Nov 6, 2008

7. I don’t have full results but at this Saturday at West Bend, Homestead qualified a Varsity squad. We’ll be competing in the V4 division.

   An informal straw poll among a few coaches suggests that V4 may indeed reach the critical mass needed for the WSDT.

   By John Knetzger on Nov 10, 2008

8. I sent these to Tim already via e-mail, but here are Waupaca qualifiers:

   V2
   Mukwonago GR Kaitlin Goodden & Alicia Roy
   Spash KK Chris Kozak & Cody Krunkilton

   JV2 (first 4 are Sat, second 2 are Fri)
   Rhinelander High KL Meagan Kelley & Rachel Lintereur
   Wausau East MM Wesley Malak & Luke Meyer
   Rhinelander High MN Joel McReynolds & Josh Nordquist
   Rhinelander High HW Cooper Henkel & David Walters

   Rhinelander High GM Ryan Gittins & Joel Mcreynolds
   Wausau East AM Wesley Malak & Luke Meyer

   N2 (first 4 are Sat, second 4 are Fri)
   SPASH BN Morgan Brady & Joseph Cal
   SPASH BC Tyler Brandon & Cassie Novotny
   Wausau East BG April Begaye & Jade Goetz
   Mukwonago CL Austin Colovich & Alissa Lenz

   Bradley Tech PW Shahira Parker & Devun Walker
   Mukwonago RK Alex Raszeja & Morgan Kebbekus
   Neenah HS NTBlake Nigh & Alex Thounsavath
   SPASH BCTyler Brandon & Cassie Novotny

   I have a couple of comments, one of which should generate a thread. First, I used the CSUF entry system and it was very smooth. It is cheaper (free, or donation-based) than Joy of Tournaments ($150-200) but not as pretty. It would allow us to store results forever if we ask nicely ; – )

   I think we need to have a system to verify novice eligibility and this could be it. I can load all results to the CSUF site after the tournament and they are sortable by debater or by squad. TRPC is a great tabulation system (although I have had glitches with judges not showing up…but I was able to work around them). I think we should move in the direction of strongly encouraging use of TRPC and CSUF because they will solve problems with reporting of results and tournament administration issues. That’s my two cents on the subject. I hope we use CSUF for state because it really is slick!

   My second comment is that I think we need to limit sanctioning to one tournament per weekend. The exec committee had a heck of a time filling out the tournament calendar from what I could see and it really is rough financially and logistically hosting a small tournament. I have suggested eliminating overlap in divisions between the North and South on any given weekend, but people grumbled. If we allow the marketplace to work this one out, debate will be dead in the North within 3-5 years. Budgets are shrinking and with some Northern teams heading South (for the Winter), when a perfectly accommodating Northern option is available on the same weekend, it could happen sooner. If the marketplace causes people to chose Milwaukee Metro over Merrill, it eliminates a fundraiser for Merrill and increases their travel expenses as the Northern tournament options dwindle. I’m pretty certain Waupaca won’t host a tournament next year due in large part to the high cost and low revenue. I think Neenah would be willing to consider hosting next year, but I’d strongly discourage them from going opposite a Midwest NTOC qualifier or a Southern tournament.

   By Cory Puuri on Nov 10, 2008

9. Correction:

   JV2:
   Wausau East AM is Ben Abreau & Markus Mladek

   By Cory Puuri on Nov 10, 2008

10. Cory,

    I think that we should wait a year before jumping into an online system for the state tournament. I think that online systems are great and I would encourage all tournament directors to move to an online system and the use of TRPC. But I think we need to consider what we want out of that system. Sure the CSUF system maybe free – but that doesn’t mean that it fits the needs of the WSDT. An advantage of the Joy of Tournaments system is that it takes care of preferencing. For the operation of the state tournament this is a huge advantage, because it used to consume a lot of Traas’s time.

    Instead of restricting the number of tournaments on a given weekend, I think we should reduce the number of divisions. Most tournaments have had only two viable policy divisions. Removing JV, might help. The other thing is that most tournament directors didn’t heed my advice about making strategic choices. Instead of making a choice about what to hold, most people have just “let the market” decide.

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 10, 2008

11. Making “strategic choices” still isn’t helpful to teams who don’t have the resources/financial options to split the squad regularly. Even though we might not be able to bring the *whole* team every weekend (I think it’s fair to assume not all tournaments will hold every division), we may need to condense down to one in-state tournaent per weekend for viability reasons. When teams are asked to choose between a North tournament, a Southern tournament, and various national options, all WI parties lose.

    I’m fairly certain that if tournaments “acted strategically”, the majority of directors would respond by conditioning what divisions they bring to an individual tournament based on the division(s) offered. For example, if Bubb high school in Appleton and Voss high school in Madison were hosting a tournament the weekend of 11/22, and Bubb HS offered VSS/OSS/LD/PF and Voss HS offered V4/JV4/N4/LD/PF, most schools would likely attend only one of these. Additionally, the “be strategic” option doesn’t address low attendence. Even if the DCA determined which school gets which division on a certain weekend, we would still see the same low-revenue problems for all parties. Taking the example above, Bubb HS wouldn’t get the SOUTHERN teams, it would get the “national-style” teams. Voss HS wouldn’t get the NORTHERN teams, it would get the schools that enjoy four-person debate. Irrespective of who goes where, the two-tournaments/weekend framework still makes hosting a tournament unprofitable.

    I know that no one wants the WDCA to exert such strong control over the schedule that accusations of authoritarian rule result: but intervention is necessary. Cory’s right–debate in the North is on life-support. Even if harsh rules about the schedule make some people happy or decrease the number of options on a given weekend, it’s well worth the cost to save numerous long-standing programs in WI.

    By Jon Voss on Nov 10, 2008

12. I’d really prefer not to get into this debate because I feel like my comments may sound more negative than what I intend them to be. But here it goes.

    If debate in the north is on life support, the solution shouldn’t be to force the northern teams to travel longer for half the schedule. The solution is to get more northern teams and tournaments. As a former northern coach, in so far as “northern” means “not milwaukee” (which I think is the functioning definition for both the WDCA and WFCA) – the problem is the dwindling amount of northern programs. Lots of old northern programs that at least had teams, no longer do not. When is the last time anyone has seen a Rhinelander or a Wausau East team? Yet both of these schools continue to vote in WDCA activities. If the teams are not in the north to host a self sustaining division, the solution is to get more teams. I’d place the problem this year on turn over, rather than anything else (spash and wausau are down; spash is a big impact – Joe used to keep the varsity division a float every week). I think the fallout of one school leaving the region to compete against their CFL rivals is a natural reaction to that decision. I guess my only comment on that issue is that you reap what you sow.

    I think the status quo is at least better than the one tournament a season option. A one tournament a weekend schedule would drastically reduce the number of opportunities to debate in the state of Wisconsin. I also think a one tournament a week schedule would guarantee that debate goes away in areas where it currently is struggling. Squo allows for debate to return to these areas provided that there are teams in the area. So when programs up north get big – then they can return.

    I think the evidence supports the contrary conclusion w/ respect to tournaments that run opposite national circuit ones. We ran a tournament against UMich for two years and against a tournament in Wisconsin that was less than a hour way both of those years. We still made a profit. That’s because I spent time talking to other coaches to get a sense of what would work. My sense is that this isn’t happening. The “where are you going thread” got zero responses.

    I think most people missed the point on being “strategic.” My suggestion wasn’t to say, “I’ll host whatever brings teams to my tournament” to every tournament. That will never work and with two tournaments you shouldn’t favor one over the other. My suggestion was to make a choice about what you are doing and to make that choice based on what is likely to occur – instead of making that determination a week of the tournament. For example, Waupaca and Sheboygan North last year explicitly said they would not host four person divisions, but would instead host switch side only divisions. This was a choice they made, and it wasn’t a “only if we get the numbers” decision. My suggestion was for tournament directors to be like Dubya – The Decider.

    One of the aspects I long mentioned with strategic scheduling was that there should NOT be two day tournaments everywhere. Yet everyone seems to demand that there should be two day tournaments. The model that I have been trying to stress is that coaches should move to a longer one day tournament for every weekend but the old big four (Marquette, Pius, Appleton East, State). If we transform the old big four to this year’s schedule it is: Marquette, Wauk South, Sheb North, State. This is what I meant by strategic. The shorter one day makes it an easy sell for teams to travel outside of their region and should increase the number of teams participating. I also said that there should be ONLY one varsity competition when there is a regional national circuit tournament (new trier, glenbrooks, Valley, and Caucus. UMich and Apple Valley don’t count – but teams on occasion go to both places). Granted the New Trier movement threw off our schedule, but I fail to see how this justifies a rejection of “smart scheduling” when it didn’t happen. I further don’t see the problem if La Crosse and Madison got big turn outs and there are virtually no teams in those areas aside from the hosting school.

    Another problem is that people expect that the tournament should make funds – this isn’t always the case. Sometimes you lose funds. It’s a fact of hosting tournaments, but there are things that you can do (like not putting the years on your trophies/not giving out trophies/recycle old trophies) that can reduce your losses or ensure that you make a small profit every year. The objective of hosting a tournament is to provide opportunities to students – not make funds.

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 10, 2008

13. Nick: CSUF does preferencing, too. It can handle any approach supported by TRPC. The way it works is that teams enter their judges, then you flip a switch to turn on preferencing. Prefences are imported with the text file. Zero data entry. It really is that easy. If you have some time, you can set up a dummy tournament to see how it works. Also, I’m not sure if JoT supports 4-person, but CSUF does.

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 11, 2008

14. it does (we are using it for the North Tournament).

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 11, 2008

15. I’m having trouble seeing how we can get the tournament setup can be formatted both as four-person even and a “normal” event. (Their words, not mine…)

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 11, 2008

16. For CSUF, you need to setup VSS, LD and PF as one tournament and 4-person as a second tournament because you can’t upload a text file containing both 2-person events and 4-person events on the same instance of TRPC. I will set this up and you can take a look.

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 11, 2008

17. Ok, I now feel comfortable in my decision to vote for Sauer over you, Nick. I really don’t think you can set aside your personal differences with the “4-person” crowd to be a champion of debate in the state. When you assume the role of President, you need to put aside your agenda of divisiveness and assume responsibility of serving the organization membership…even those you disagree with. You need to champion debate in all forms. I can’t not respond to your comments above.

    YOU SAID: If debate in the north is on life support, the solution shouldn’t be to force the northern teams to travel longer for half the schedule.
    ME: My answer is that the effect is that they have to travel for the whole schedule killing budgets and eliminating their potential to run tournaments as fundraisers. Ask your constituency in the North. This is what 3 separate tournament directors have told me.

    YOU SAID: The solution is to get more northern teams and tournaments.
    ME: And what are you doing to actively make that happen? It seems as though you are too busy trying to kill 4-person debate to be actively setting an agenda of increasing the number of schools participating in the North. In addition, if there are no North tournaments to attend, how do you suppose a team from Eau Claire or Green Bay for that matter is going to get a budget to drive to Milwaukee on a regular basis? You forget how hard it is to get a budget starting a program from scratch. Now, if you said, “I’m going to create a WDCA budget to provide seed money, get registration fees waived for, and help get new schools housed”…then we’d be talking!

    YOU SAID: As a former northern coach…
    ME: You lost me there. Your definition is based on organizational districting not roadmaps. It probably is closer for you to drive to Milwaukee than Hortonville, let alone Merrill, which is the part of the state I’m talking about.

    YOU SAID: The problem is the dwindling amount of northern programs. Lots of old northern programs that at least had teams, no longer do not. When is the last time anyone has seen a Rhinelander or a Wausau East team? Yet both of these schools continue to vote in WDCA activities.
    ME: I saw both teams this past weekend. If you’d check your qualifiers list above, you’d see that they both have qualifiers to state in divisions you want to kill. Also, the root cause of this problem is budgets and you’re not going to magically get North teams to sprout up without a budget discussion and the lack of northern tournaments is a HUGE budget problem that will hinder growth of new teams and ultimately kill existing Northern teams. Separately, why on earth would you advocate as President of the WDCA killing a supposedly dwindling schools vote in an organization they pay dues to. That is your pro-switchside anti-4-person political side talking, not a pro-unity, pro-growth stance that the President of an organization SHOULD have. It is this kind of commentary that led the WDCA to split from WHSFA.

    YOU SAID: I’d place the problem this year on turn over, rather than anything else (spash and wausau are down; spash is a big impact – Joe used to keep the varsity division a float every week). I think the fallout of one school leaving the region to compete against their CFL rivals is a natural reaction to that decision. I guess my only comment on that issue is that you reap what you sow.
    ME: My response is that if you place politics before students, it will be Appleton, JMM and Marquette debating together every weekend and maybe you are happy with that, but the NDT almost died before the merger and I suspect you’ll see something similar happen if your attitude is “you reap what you sow”.

    YOU SAID: I think the status quo is at least better than the one tournament a season option. A one tournament a weekend schedule would drastically reduce the number of opportunities to debate in the state of Wisconsin.
    ME: That is about as non-responsive to my arguments as it gets. How about we write up a schedule that has 10 North tournaments every weekend and claim that debate is thriving in the North–on paper. Why don’t you talk to a few coaches “up here” before making such an ignorant argument. I’ll extend two responses from before: 1) North teams lose money running tournaments with dwindling numbers due to teams dividing between North and South, and 2) Budgets are killing Northern teams.

    YOU SAID: I also think a one tournament a week schedule would guarantee that debate goes away in areas where it currently is struggling. Squo allows for debate to return to these areas provided that there are teams in the area. So when programs up north get big – then they can return.
    ME: Do you have some magical school participation growth fertilizer? There isn’t any warrant for why they would grow.

    YOU SAID: I think the evidence supports the contrary conclusion w/ respect to tournaments that run opposite national circuit ones. We ran a tournament against UMich for two years and against a tournament in Wisconsin that was less than a hour way both of those years. We still made a profit.
    ME: Cross-apply the “Sheboygan isn’t ‘North’ on a map” answer above.

    YOU SAID: My suggestion was for tournament directors to be like Dubya – The Decider.
    ME: The GOP lost this election because they were non-responsive to the concerns of the masses. Politics and partisan bickering over constructive change. Free markets over regulation. This really is a great analogy to prove my point.

    YOU SAID: One of the aspects I long mentioned with strategic scheduling was that there should NOT be two day tournaments everywhere.
    ME: If Waupaca hadn’t been two 1-day tournaments, we wouldn’t have come close to covering costs. As it was, there were some complaints we were an expensive tournament, but because of how few schools attended, we needed to hire about 8-10 judges to make it work and we still functionally lost money.

    YOU SAID: The objective of hosting a tournament is to provide opportunities to students – not make funds.
    ME: Yeah, try selling that to an Admin looking to cut costs. Yes, Ms. Activity Director, we are funding opportunities for all of these other schools to do debate on the District’s dime. Would you like me to send your comment to your district during budget cuts time? I’m thinking you won’t be coming out with more funds after that one.

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 12, 2008

18. A couple of things.

    Long time tournament directors like Ken Sadjak and relatively recent ones Tim Scheffler, have run their tournaments at no-profit or deficits almost every year. They do this because the activity wouldn’t exist without competitions. This happens all the time in forensics. I’m not saying that trying to make a return on the tournament is a bad thing – in fact you should try to get one. But tournament directors shouldn’t expect a return. The choice of “if I don’t make money or I won’t do it” is ultimately one that hurts our students. Between Voss and I, we have already invested close to $2k for the north tournament. We hope that we will recoup all of that and still make a small return for the team. But if we don’t at least our students will have had fun doing the activity and we won’t feel bad about the funds we spent.

    I will readily agree that we need more northern tournaments. I’ve been concerned about this all season. But I can’t force Fox Valley teams to stay in the fox valley like they used to. I will also concede that this schedule had some problems with it, but I think that me, Bill, and the rest of the exec board did the best we could with a limited amount of time. We had to replace to southern tournaments: Rufus King and Brookfield Central. New Trier also moved from where we expected it to be – making the Hort/JMM weekend very hard to be in either place. It probably was not the best of ideas to place West Bend opposite a “northern” tournament – but we had no other choice. The alternatives were host west bend and waupaca or just Waupaca. While that certainly benefits one school significantly – it leaves out half of the state.

    Could we do a better job scheduling tournaments such that the regions don’t overlap? Sure. But we’ve had this problem in the past – particularly on the first weekend of November. Last year Sheboygan and Appleton North were on the same weekend. The year before Sheboygan and Brookfield were on the same weekend.

    In response to your “Sheboygan isn’t North on the map” answers. During my tenure as director for Sheboygan North, I made it an explicit objective to attend the northern tournaments even though it was a longer drive and more costly (LaCrosse over South Milwaukee is a difference of 4 hours on the road. Ask Jon and Noah how much they enjoyed those bus rides). The same thing was true with Hortonville. I would like to be supportive of all tournaments, but I can’t be at everyone all the time. (Particularly now that I’m just an assistant coach). I’m not sure how this is responsive, but I think my initial claim was that in the past I’ve been to a number of these tournaments and I understand the problems that are facing them.

    I guess all I can say is that next year we will try and schedule things differently so that regional, one day tournaments can function every where and that a few larger instate tournaments are also possible. I don’t see why there is a resistance to one day tournaments – there’s no hotel costs, there’s less time involved. This would seem to alleviate budget constraints and make it more likely for teams to travel outside of their region and support struggling programs. Giving teams a single day option isn’t sufficient – the entire tournament needs to run on a one day basis.

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 12, 2008

19. I don’t think there will be a problem next year. Merrill likely won’t host a tournament. I know Waupaca won’t host a tournament. Hortonville likely won’t either. Are there any other schools aside from Appleton and LaCrosse? This reminds me of what happened to college policy debate in the state. The schools disappeared and then the remaining teams did Parli until UWO switched back this year.

    Oh well, it was worth a try. I’m not sure anyone on the exec board really cares about the rural parts of the state, anyway. I’m sure the remaining Northern teams in the WDCA can survive the budget cuts and travel to Milwaukee every weekend. Enjoy the commute and the 5 am departure times for those 1 day tournaments.

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 12, 2008

20. What would the response be from the WDCA membership to a schedule that is intentionally engineered to promote travel to different regions of the state? For example, what if we only sanctioned one tournament on each of three or four weekends and it was in a different region of the state each time — I’m thinking one in the Eau Claire area, one in the La Crosse area, one in the Southwest (might have to be Madison), and one in the “center” (Stevens Point? somewhere West of the Fox Valley and East of Eau Claire).

    I would be willing to commit to sending our squad to each of the tournaments. My fear/concern is that the majority of squads in the metro-Milwaukee area would respond not by attending tournaments in these regions but by simply not competing on those weekends.

    The other idea that hasn’t seemed to ever pick up an steam is the idea of conference- or region-based weekday leagues. Especially in PF and LD (because of the shorter rounds), it is possible to get in three or four debates after school on a weekday. If a group of squads agreed on a schedule and rotated hosting responsibilities, this would be a fantastic opportunity for new programs to get involved in regions of the state where there aren’t as many (or at this point, frankly *any*) invitational/Saturday tournaments. This is not a replacement for Saturday tournaments, but it wouldn’t take a whole lot of money and it would be a great supplement to existing tournaments.

    I don’t know what the answer is. I support engineering the schedule to intentionally distribute tournaments to different regions of the state, but this inevitably meets with a lot of resistance from schools that don’t want to travel that far and from schools that want to host tournaments. It’s hard for a Milwaukee-area program to justify traveling to a tournament in a different region when there is a local option, so removing that local option is probably the only way to effectively nudge these decisions in the direction we want.

    Thoughts?

    By Bill Batterman on Nov 12, 2008

21. I think that it is sad that there is so much antagonism between people regarding this issue and that needs to stop. We all agree that we want debate to be the best that it can be in Wisconsin for years to come. And attacking people personally, will not get Wisconsin debate to the level at which we want it.

    I think having a schedule where at the end of each month there is one big tourney is a good idea. I would even suggest that we should move WSDT around the state so that everyone can get to experience all areas of the state. If you follow tennis (as I do) they have what is called the US Open series where they play all over the US in smaller tournaments, all culminating at the US Open in New York. There is a similar thing for the other grand slam tournaments. We should do something similar. Have regional tournaments in your respective regions; if you want to travel outside your region go right ahead. But have a culminating BIG tournament in the west, north, south and east. Move the state tournament around so that it is not at South Milwaukee and Hortonville year after year (I like these two places and thank their coaches for hosting for us, but we need some variety. I remember going to Wausau for my last state TOC.) I understand that finding a site is probably the reason, but if we plan a couple years in advance maybe we can avoid this. It’s not like we are not going to have the state tourney.

    I know that there was some discussion regarding budgets and money and I think that we live in a capitalist world that requires the making of money to survive. That is just the way it is. But as the Bradley Tech program has developed over the years Ernest and I (well more so Ernest) knew that it was time to find someway to increase our funds somehow so that we can travel more. MPS is feeling the budget crunch just as much if not more than any other district. Ernest asked around to see how others raise money for travel and the fundraising ideas that people told him about were great. We have just started this so we haven’t just made that much yet, but the indiviuals concerned about travel/hotel costs for tournaments should consider this as part of the solution. You don’t have to host a tournament to generate money for your squad.

    Any thoughts?

    By Steve Finch on Nov 17, 2008

22. Steve,

    I 100% agree with you with the location of the State tournament. The difficulty is finding a cost free location, limits the organization to high schools. We are trying to pursue other options for next year, but we haven’t gotten very far on those requests. Some locations being considered are: Madison (not quite sure what site MATC/UW/Edgewood/Area HS are all possibilities), Milwaukee (Marquette University) Steven’s Point (SPASH or UW-SP). A major road block to changing the tournament locations is the way the tournament is currently scheduled. The early Friday start makes it very difficult to find diverse High Schools. That’s essentially why we have been in South Milwaukee or Hortonville for the last couple of years – because they can accommodate that change in schedule. The Wausau year was the last year before the schedule change (and in some ways was the tournament that forced the change). At the fall meeting the exec board asked approval to abandon the current schedule as a constraint in an attempt to find a new state location. Finding a new, workable location is a high priority for me.

    The other limiting factor is the size of the school. We’d love to move to a college campus to increase the prestige of the tournament. The problem with this is that most colleges don’t have a single building that can hold the entire state tournament. Most high schools have the same problem. South Milwaukee and Hortonville are sufficiently large enough that they have enough rooms. For most locations, we would need a second school in order to make state work. Not that we can’t do that (we did in the past), but there’s more coordination to do.

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 17, 2008

23. I’m all for regional tournaments. I think an interesting way to make them successful is to offer an alternative state qualification procedure (this would be in addition to winning your way in). Let’s call it the “punch card” approach. The way it would work is that if you send a debater to 4 regional sanctioned tournaments, then they are qualified to WSDT. Coaches could piece WSDT teams together using their punch card entries.

    Benefits:
    1) More kids go to state – Let’s face it, not everyone is gifted enough to win or tie for first at a tournament to get to WSDT, but if they are willing to travel to LaCrosse, Merrill, Sheboygan North, and Madison Memorial…they probably should get a chance to compete at state by virtue of having spent several hours on a bus during the season.
    2) Ammunition for increasing funds – It is easy for school boards to say “you don’t need to travel to LaCrosse”, let’s cut that tournament. You could now respond with, “if we want more kids to qualify for state then we do!”
    3) Keeps tournaments and programs alive in rural regions – Sometimes regulation is the only option. Market forces will always cause programs to disappear in rural regions.
    4) Gives kids a chance to visit places they may never have been able to go to – LaCrosse in the fall is a beautiful place. Jim Sauer shouldn’t have to serve a Chinese buffet to get people there (although we thank him graciously). Wausau, Merrill, Rhinelander, Madison, Hortonville…are all really interesting places to visit if you plan and ask the tournament hosts what to do and where to eat when you’re not at the tournament.

    I had some initial thoughts on scheduling it. Schools wishing to host such a regional tournament could apply and list 3 dates on their application. The exec committee would layout several scenarios for a package of 4 tourneys, select 4 and sanction the 4 schools as the “punch card” package. If all tournaments were run on TRPC and the CSUF system, we’d have an online system to validate entries. In fact, CSUF allows you to search by debater so you could see that they attended all 4 tourneys.

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 17, 2008

24. 1. Being willing to travel still as a student still won’t equal schools having money to afford the travel or students having the money to foot their own hotel bill. Being on a bus shouldn’t qualify a student for state. I think we should measure accomplishment in rounds. A better option to increase participation at state would be to revisit qualification rules in 4 speaker divisions.

    2. School boards, at least in my experience, don’t determine the schedule. As much as I’d love to travel, getting release time from school is getting tougher for those of us who teach in the district where we coach, not to mention how much harder it is to get coaches/judges who aren’t teachers to travel. I have to put my financial resources where they will benefit the most students.

    3. I don’t know how to best address this. We stay around Milwaukee because it is close and we can get judges. I’d love to be able to go farther away, but my answer to #2 show why it isn’t as possible as I’d like. I’m guessing I’m not alone, either.

    4. If I go to an administrator asking for money for travel so kids can do anything but debate it would be a tough sell. Districts are looking for anything that can be seen as “extra.” As nice as LaCrosse is,(and I agree it is) teams should go because it’s a good tournament (which it also is).

    As we consider all of this, I want to encourage all of us to put the students first. Their needs need to be at the top of the list.

    By John Knetzger on Nov 17, 2008

25. Here’s a ridiculous suggestion: should we eliminate the qualification rules to the state tournament and just let everyone come? It would be far easier to administer and we’d have more attendance than ever.

    On the other hand, debate would lose the “champion” spirit that we have over forensics. (I’m not sure if there’s a better way to say that, but I think most of you know what I mean).

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 17, 2008

26. I would just like to extend a thank you to Cory for defending Northern schools. Schools like Rhinelander and Wausau East are still competing, and do qualify for state. A Rhinelander Novice team placed second at state last year, with a 6-0 record. A student from this team was also awarded top Affirmative speaker. RHS currently has three JV teams that will be attending WSDT. It is unfair to insult or disregard teams just because they exist in small, truly Northern communities. I know that students would feel hurt if they read some of these comments. We need to constantly keep the best interest of the youth in mind, ensuring that out operations are consistent with the established objectives of debate. Thank you to everyone who wants to keep debate alive across the state!

    By Angela Schaffer on Nov 18, 2008

27. Why are so many tournaments offering only switchside for policy rounds?

    By David Walters on Nov 18, 2008

28. If a team was 3-3 all season, never qualified for state under the incumbent rules but had a nice run at state, that seems like just the kind of Cinderella story that we could use to encourage more kids to stick with it. I think the qualification requirements sometimes cause kids to “disappear” after they know they are qualified. They also tend to exclude some hard working teams that we really need at state.

    In any case, this is something to survey on. I would ask the following questions, though:

    How would this affect your decision to travel to tournaments in other regions of the state?
    a) We would travel more outside our region
    b) We would travel less outside our region
    c) No affect

    How would this affect your decision on how many kids to bring to tourneys?
    a) We’d bring more teams
    b) We’d bring fewer teams
    c) No affect

    BTW, I think you’d have to re-write the ready rule if you put this into affect. The intent of that rule was to increase team participation in-state to foster healthy competition, particularly for those teams that can’t afford to travel. Eliminating all qualification procedures means teams could abandon the state but still come back to win state. That would sort of feel like GBN coming up to enter and win our state tourney.

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 19, 2008

29. John, I certainly appreciate your concerns. I think it could be solved by offering one day tournament options at each of the 4. Also, this is an optional qualification procedure, you wouldn’t need to go that route, but it sure would help other regions of the state and if you had some kids that worked hard and deserved to be at state, you might just want to travel them for such an opportunity.

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 19, 2008

30. I know the response will be: That’s not what we passed in Spring, but …

    1) Have we attempted to find out if any VSS qualifiers would do V4?
    2) Assuming the numbers are small for V4, are we better off “cancelling V4″ (with all the negative connotations that might imply) or to blend it with VSS as some of us have done this year and in the past. Wouldn’t blending send a better message than cancelling?

    On a related note, we HAVE to talk about qualification procedures.

    1) How can we qualify teams for a division that does not exists? (JVSS and NSS for one, but what about PF Novice?)

    2) Perhaps one of our V4 number problems is that we qualify 1 team in V4 (in most cases) EVEN if the number of teams is equal to the VSS division. (At my tournament, for example, the number of rooms in V4 equaled the number of rooms used in VSS, yet we qualified 1 (4 students) in V4 and 8 (16 in VSS).

    3) The 2 person qualifier rule says VSS teams qualify by “taking part in the elimination rounds of a varsity division or … ” Do the elims have to be held?

    4) Is it time to do away with JV once and for all?

    By Ken Sajdak on Nov 19, 2008

31. Oops…last comment should have included….

    Many tourneys have blended V4 and JV. Yet some of the teams that qualified (beating varsity teams) are going JV. Rules say “Any debater who qualifies both on the junior varsity and novice levels, must debate in the junior varsity division.” doesn’t the same apply here?

    And why wouldn’t they go Varsity anyway? Because we award JV the same level of awards as a V? Does that make sense?

    By Ken Sajdak on Nov 19, 2008

32. Ken, I’m with you on the JV thing. I think this calls into question the existence of that division.

    With respect to number 3 – an elimination round needs to be held. For example, if you had enough to do quarters in PF, but decided only to hold a final because of time constraints – this would give bids to all of the competitors, not just those that participated in finals.

    The bid equity problem between V4 and VSS is created by the different ways of tabulating that division. V4 doesn’t have elimination rounds (it could), so it has the single winner bid system. My though was that in the past, V4 was frequently tied so that one or two teams was equivalent to semis at VSS tournaments. (Which is what we have often had). I guess if V4 teams suddenly started wanting to do elimination rounds you could use that a criteria for determining bids. But if you’re willing to do that, then why not just do switch side? (I know the answer, but I had to ask).

    I would say that if teams have been co-existing in the same division that perhaps we could begin to move to one varsity division. If a cooperative division is possible – then it seems to me that the differences between the divisions are meaningless.

    By Nick Bubb on Nov 19, 2008

33. I do agree that we have blended V4 and JV4 so much that we should just combine them for the state tourney, even for this year. I mean I understand that we have these procedures and all but I think that this is an issue for this year and we tried to map out a way to resolve it but obviously we need a lot more. I thought that the rules said as well that if you compete in a division higher than the division that you qualified in more than twice that you forfeit your spot in the lower division. Because we have had open so much what does that mean? That’s why we should just have open for the state tourney. But I really see why Mr Sajdak wants JV eliminated. It makes sense now.

    But maybe in the future to increase participation in V4 (assuming JV will stay and open will not be a new division) maybe have more than one qualifier, maybe even the top three. Most of time its the same teams getting first and/or second. I mean Homestead has really been tearin’ it up this season. Mukwanago as defending V4 champs have as well. I think this discourages teams from doing V4 because these teams win week after week with records that are hard to match simply because there are too few entries to allow for matching records. Increasing the number of V4 qualifiers would generate the numbers necessary to keep V4 running not only at WSDT but also regional invitationals.

    By Steve Finch on Nov 19, 2008

34. Steve,
    First, as the Homestead coach, It’s great that the hard work of my kids is getting some recognition, but I think we prove that anybody can make it in V4, not the other way around. We’re not loaded with lots of numbers or experience, just hard working kids eager to learn and grow.

    I totally agree that we need to move away from JV. But we cannot do that for the WSDT this year. There is nothing in the standing rules that allows that to happen and it wouldn’t be fair to ask schools who have qualified in JV to suddenly pop for a hotel, extra judge or 2, and everything else that goes with the Varsity division.

    Perhaps we can examine this at the same time we discuss expanding PF to two divisions. This way we can crown champions in Varsity PF, Varsity LD, Varsity 4 Speaker Policy and Varsity 2 Speaker Policy Debate, recognizing that each division offers its own style of debate.

    Nick,
    What kind of single Varsity division are you advocating? This year we’ve seen a combination of JV and Varsity 4 speaker divisions, not a combination of V4 and V2. I think you mean combine JV4 and V4, but I’d appreciate clarification.

    By John Knetzger on Nov 19, 2008

35. John,

    There have been tourney THIS year that have blended V4 and VSS….

    By Ken Sajdak on Nov 20, 2008

36. Although I know this tends to be a touchy subject of conversation I figured it was time to put my two cents in…

    I do have a question, because I hear this argument leveled a lot when it comes to v4 and VSS, but how exactly do Varsity 4 speaker policy and Varsity 2 speaker policy differ in style of debate? (I know the obvious answer is 4 people per team vs 2 people per team but I am asking in a more substantive sense). It seems to me PF, LD and Policy debate all offer different styles of debate, and Novice, JV/Open and Varsity all offer different levels of competition difficulty within those styles, but I fail to see how Varsity 4 policy and Varsity 2 policy differ in fundamental style.

    Although this is just a brief overview of the situation and the styles, to me it seems obvious that a move towards Varsity 2 needs to be accepted. The national circuit no longer offers any form of 4 person debate, its all 2 person. Moreover, when you are talking about increasing participation in debate, what better than to decrease the total number of students necessary to fully compete as a team. Getting two talented students together to debate at the varsity level is much easier than finding 4. Finally, why split the pool of varsity level talent? A tournament of 4 4-person teams would be the same as 8 2-person teams, which would substantially add to the depth and competition of a tournament. It seems to me that melding V4 and VSS seems to be a logical conclusion to increasing both participation at the Varsity level and depth of competition at that level as well.

    By Mark Morgan on Nov 22, 2008

37. It would be hard to find someone who has been a bigger supporter of Switch Sides debating than me.

    However, the style differences are real.

    A simple question:

    Is debate, primarily, a communication activity?

    By Ken Sajdak on Nov 23, 2008

38. Mark,

    The differences between 4 speaker and 2 speaker policy debate have been explored, discussed, argued, etc. more times than I care to remember. Going back over that ground would be counterproductive to the process. We can continue to have both by encouraging both.

    By John Knetzger on Nov 23, 2008

39. hopefully you dont misunderstand what i mean…i more than agree that V4 and V2 are quite often different, you need only watch a round. That said, the differences are stylistic at best, not structural. LD and PF are very different formats of debate than policy, thus why each often has its own novice and varsity levels. Varsity 4 is stylistically different than Varsity 2, not structurally different, its still policy. What I am advocating is that since a structural difference does not exist, thus there should only be one varsity level…this isn’t because of any instrisic dislike of the 4 person style of debate, but rather that I feel an all inclusive 2 person division would encourage far more participation and larger pools of competition at tournaments…

    This thread has become about trying to promote participation and possibly to make tournaments larger and more competitive, thus I feel that discussing this as a possible solution to said problem is far from counterproductive to the process. I see no reason why operating as a team of 2 versus a team of 4 would create some kind of default structural barrier that would make it hard for V4 debaters to compete inside of the 2 person framework, and I think the benefits to the activity would be enormous.

    This is nothing against the “style” of V4, its about what is going to keep varsity participation high and competitive.

    By Mark Morgan on Nov 23, 2008

40. With respect, saying that the ground has already “been explored and argued a bunch” doesn’t answer Mark’s question. There are stylistic differences in how v-4 is executed, but I find it odd that we have a separate division that makes one team debate only side of the topic the entire tournament. If you want a slower division (one that values communication more), why don’t you create a slow division rather than forcing teams to find 4 people to form a team/ limiting the debate to one side of the resolution? I’m guessing the reason you don’t is that type of debate (or perhaps better said the benefits from that type of debate) would be, as Mark argues, indistinguishable from public forum- at least in style that you want. I agree with Ken’s ultimate question– that will decide what people think on this.

    By Andy Nolan on Nov 24, 2008

41. I do agree with Mark that moving toward a 2 person only format in Varsity is the way to go. But, we do have to realize that there are style differences that are apparent between V4 and V2 and I think that there is where the problems between exclusive V4 proponents and exclusive V2 proponents. I realized this myself this weekend that there are real stylistic differences. HOWEVER, that is not to say that we cannot teach our teams to adapt to different styles of debate/judging.

    I know that debate is a communication activity but at the end of it all the ballot says that best debating was done by (blank). Style should not matter with that respect!

    By Steve Finch on Nov 24, 2008

42. Isn’t the substance different, too? I mean, the last V4 debates I saw featured case and disads on the neg. They also, actually, made analytics about the lack of internal links on case, quality of sources, evidence date comparisons on etc. There were no debates about what debate should be (i.e., theory). There weren’t any counter plans or critiques. Has that changed in the last couple years?

    I don’t think that is PF. It is more like ADA on the college circuit. For those that don’t know what ADA is, it is policy debate with some strict rules to force it to be less of a game and more of a communication activity. Here are the rules:
    http://www.liberty.edu/academics/communications/debate/index.cfm?PID=15224

    By Cory Puuri on Nov 24, 2008

43. I don’t think that those are definitive substance differences between V4 and V2. When I debated in switch almost all of my 2NR’s were disad + case, its a valid and successful strategy, one that I have seen several other teams use at switch (I think the reason it seems a less common strat this year is more based on the nature of the resolution and aff cases than anything else). And the difference between teams that make analytical arguments and point out case flaws is the difference between analytical teams and teams who have been blocked out for every scenario, not V2 and V4.

    I’ll stipulate that there is a substantive difference in the theory/kritikal realm, which is almost non-existent at V4, and far more prevalent at V2. That said, although theory debates do get a tad abused, overall they serve a very valid point in policy debate.

    I think what Andy is saying is not that the structure of V4 (or an equivalent level of policy debate where it would be evaluated as more of a communication activity) would be structurally similar to PF, but rather the educational benefits for the participants would be the same, which I would agree with. We already have a form of debate that prides communication skills over strategic policy implementation debate

    By Mark Morgan on Nov 24, 2008

44. Mark said: “We already have a form of debate that prides communication skills over strategic policy implementation debate”

    Yes, it used to be policy debate.

    Why was LD introduced? Because the NFL sponsors demanded a communication style of debate. What happened to that?

    PF is communication now. How long before we muck that up, too?

    As Walt Kelly (Pogo) said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

    I agree that this may not be te best forum for the discussion, but until we as coaches come to grips with the basic dichotomy, we will continue to drift.

    Mark also said: “This is nothing against the “style” of V4, its about what is going to keep varsity participation high and competitive.”

    I agree. I want debate to succeed. But we need to define “competitive.”

    By Ken Sajdak on Nov 30, 2008

45. I have purposely been avoiding this site all season because every time I read the discussion threads I get angry. But like everyone else I’m throwing in my two cents.

    First let me say that at the request of the exec board, I stuck it out an additional year by hosting, let me rephrase, attempting to host, a tournament this year. After Merrill’s last 2 tournaments and the lack of respondents (with the exception of some consistently wonderful coaches–Jim, Neil, Kristi, Gretchen), I was skeptical about doing it again. It costs money to host a tournament although we tried to make cuts whereever we could. Unfortunately, I don’t have the expendable funds from a school budget (of $500) nor $2k like Bubb and Voss in pocket to make it a magical weekend. I set a deadline of one week prior to the tournament for two reasons. One, if I wasn’t going to get numbers enough to hold divisions, I wasn’t going to have Jim travel from LaCrosse or Kristi from Hortonville to debate against themselves. They could travel elsewhere or not travel at all and save money. It’d be more cost effective for them, not to mention considerate. Two, we had FBLA offer to provide food for our tournament. They needed to purchase and make their menu items. To cancel on them the day prior to the tournament because we didn’t have enough entries is terribly rude, and when it helps to have support in the school for an activity that’s already on the chopping block, it’s a “strategic choice.” So with only a few teams registered at the deadline (there was one that came in late) and not enough kids to make any one division, I cancelled. I was admonished by some veteran coaches who said to wait it out. However, all of those comments came from southern suburban/city coaches. And as supportive as Nick says he is of northern tournaments, he hasn’t set foot in Merrill High School in my time as coach. As a matter of fact, the only schools that have consistently been here have been LaCrosse and a few north of Appleton. Wausau West, our closest neighbor, never even registered. I can only speculate on the reason but a change in the guard may have had an impact on where or if they traveled. Rhinelander was also not heard from.

    Ironically, I took the weekend I did because it was completely free. In the spring meeting I expressed my concerns to the board that I would not host a tournament if there was going to be a southern counterpart. I made it explicitly clear that Merrill’s program was hanging by a thread and if the debate community at large wanted to see the activity stay alive much less grow, especially in the north, that their support was desperately needed this year to keep it afloat. I was consoled by the board who said that the weekend was mine and to please, please continue to host. Despite no experience with hosting a tournament alone, I even agreed to host VSS to entice teams to attend because I was encouraged that someone finally was listening. Rufus King was scheduled opposite my tournament, dropped due to Adam’s departure, and Brookfield East quickly penciled in as a replacement, all within a month’s time. Strategic choices, I guess.

    Hosting a one-day tournament wouldn’t have made a bit if difference in this case. Why would anyone make that trip for one day of competition? I wouldn’t. So really the argument that one day tournaments will increase competition is illogical. That idea is coming from a southern mindset where schools are located within reasonable driving distance of each other. If Merrill would have to–and I say have to because the closest tournament to us this year was Hortonville, almost a 2 hour trip–travel solely to one day tournaments I wouldn’t have a debater left because a Saturday start to finish for use would mean a 3:30 a.m. departure with arrival back home well after midnight the next day. Regardless, no one in the south even was considering making the trip up here. Two things have happened. One, southern schools feel it’s too far to drive (despite the fact that Merrill has boarded a bus to drive an average of 3 1/2 hours to check into a hotel to debate a two-day tournament no less than 5 times this year–more on that later). Amazingly, Jim Sauer makes it here year after year. It astounds me that Appleton teams will drive 4 hours to La Crosse but won’t make the 2 hour trip up here. This leads me to my next point. I’m going to make a few assumptions here. Let me preface this by saying that I know other squads deal with budget constraints as I do and such teams in the south truly cannot afford to travel overnight with their teams. However, I have gotten the distinct impression that there are two groups of people in Wisconsin debate. The first that truly care about debate as a communicative and educational activity; that it functions for the benefits of kids. This group is working, although in vain, to maintain a sense of community amongst schools within the State. The second group thrives on the glory and prestige of the activity, mainly prodded by the cut-throat style of VSS. I suspect that most teams who can reasonably make the trip to Merrill don’t because the Merrill tournament doesn’t have the elite competition that southern or out-of-state tournaments would have or provide. We’ve become the crazy cousin whose house you’d rather die first than set foot in.

    Let me give you a breakdown of the status of debate in Merrill. Our annual budget is $500. We fundraise and have made about $1200 in profit over the last 6 months. Originally I had record numbers enrolled–26. That was until parents found out that every overnight cost their student $20 to offset the cost of the hotel and that it would cost an additional $100 per student per season to offset the cost of judge fees if they couldn’t volunteer to judge. We have to leave about 10 a.m. on a Friday to get down to the Milwaukee area in time to check into our motel and register for a tournament. Parents aren’t willing to miss a day’s pay, another reason for Merrill having to cancel our tournament. Those parents could still work the night shift and Saturday because they were given sufficient notice. Unfortunately, many of my debater’s parents are literally struggling to put food on the table so the $100 fee wasn’t strictly enforced. I ended up with 11 participants most of whom don’t pitch in the $20 because mom or dad didn’t have the money to spare. Knowing our budget was limited, we selected only a handful of tournaments to attend. We reserve 5 rooms(1 for the bus driver, 1 for the female coach and judges, 1 for the male debaters/judges, and 2 for the 9 girls) per weekend at an average of $70 per room. That amounts to about $400 with tax. Tournament fees run anywhere from $80 to $220, depending on which side of the state you’re on. It’s more expensive to go south. Each judge is $200 per weekend, multiply by an average of 3 and that’s $600. It’s more if we can’t find one of our own available. The asking price has risen to just under/over $200 per day in some places. Pretty sweet, considering most are college kids who would be happy making half that per day. For an eight hour day, $200 is more than my teacher’s salary per day and I work twice as hard and twice as long. Without factoring in the gas we pay to the bus company, we have not spent less than a minimum of $1250 per weekend this season to compete. We reduced our travel to 5 tournaments (one was a one-day Friday) so we’ve spent more than $5000 traveling to the Milwaukee area for competition. If you haven’t been following the numbers, we are about $3500 in debt to the district just from this season. Add in what I get for extra-curricular pay and the district doesn’t see any cost-effective benefits from keeping the program.

    Sometimes hosting a tournament is about making money when it means the difference between having a program and not. And when it means the difference between giving an educational opportunity to a kid who desperately wants to make something better out of his life or not. Although the main objective by hosting for us has never been to make money just to have it, but having the Wisconsin debate community support a Merrill tournament would have provided needed money to keep our program running.

    Merrill offered to host the State tournament last year and even received the okay from administration with enthusiasm. They saw it as a great way to promote the town. Merrill could have economically benefitted from hosting the State tournament. However, when the offer was placed on the table, the answer was a resounding “NO.” In no uncertain terms and no sugar-coating, the southern schools would simply not think of considering a trip that far north. In a time when the WDCA officers struggle to find volunteers to host the State tournament but reject an offer because it inconveniences them and bemoan the downward spiral that debate in Wisconsin has found itself in while dually and implicitly sending the message that their agendas come first, it is no surprise that discussions like the ones I’ve read in this thread are occurring.

    Everyone, we’ve lost the sense of community and commraderie that had kept debate in Wisconsin viable. And the demise of debate is visibly seen in the north. The discussions we need to have can no longer be driven by self-serving agendas. The board needs to create some real solutions soon to these problems, with deliberate action and community focus in mind, or they can carve another notch in their belts as they have just eliminated another program.

    By Kari Strebig on Dec 8, 2008

46. “I don’t have the expendable funds from a school budget (of $500) nor $2k like Bubb and Voss in pocket to make it a magical weekend”

    I dont think thats too appropriate. It was just 3-4 years ago (back when Nathan Hansen was the Merrill Coach) when the Sheb North Debate team was hanging on by a thread due to budgetary constraints. Nick, Jon, and Chad singlehandedly brought that program back—while forking out cash from their own pockets along the way.

    Comparing budgets and pointing fingers will not solve this problem.

    By Matt Olson on Dec 10, 2008

47. I would like to suggest that people stop making the assumption that where you go = what you care about. Just because I haven’t been able to make it to LaCrosse’s or Hortonville’s tournament over the last two years does not mean that I don’t care about those areas. I think a lot of this animosity started out when coaches starting calling out other squad’s travel decisions. We need to get past that.

    By Nick Bubb on Dec 10, 2008

48. Kari raises an interesting question…. How do we decide who hosts, how, and to what benefit.

    Here’s my take… (and I’m not pointing fingers here, I’m guilty, too.) We guarantee a monopoly for a school on a weekend (at least one north, one south). We then guarantee the date in perpetuity. Finally, we don’t regulate fees or awards.

    The result? We have teams taxing other communities so they can run a team in their home town.

    As budgets get smaller, Kari points out the costs of travel. Would it help to control entry costs?

    By Ken Sajdak on Dec 10, 2008

49. I wasn’t going to respond… but here is my two cents…

    A considerable amount of discussion has occurred here regarding schools, teams and/or coaches decisions as to what tournament to travel to. I guess my first response would be that I am first a coach hired to coach the students of my school(s), and therefore the welfare of that school’s program is my first responsibility. However, while I was an officer and aided in the operation of the state tournament – I did so at the expense of my students and program. (My school ALWAYS covered the cost of my lodging, and I NEVER asked the association to cover my judging obligation while working a tournament. Never did I accept a check for mileage to attend a meeting.) Additionally, there was lost coaching time while preparing for and the running of said tournament. All to benefit the association, not my students.

    Tournaments – I do not believe we as a collective association can mandate schools to attend a tournament. That just seems counterproductive anyway… “you must go to this tournament or else”. Can we ask ourselves why some tournaments are attended very well and some are not? It has very little to do these days with VSS, and if fact if anything it has more to do with LD than any other category, However in my humble opinion – it is the appeal to students. Quite frankly – if students do not want to attend a particular tournament, they will most assuredly make themselves unavailable for that weekend. Make the tournament appeal to students and they will want to attend. Additionally, not every tournament has to be a State qualifier or a super-huge tournament, what is wrong with 2 or 3 schools coming together for an early weekend meet and just having some fun. A couple of years on an early weekend there was absolutely nothing happening – so Appleton East, West and Hortonville got together with some students and had some rounds in 4 different divisions of debate – done by 12:30 – thus no food, no entry fees, just debating. There is nothing stopping this from occurring more frequently, nothing stopping Marathon HS students from driving over and having a debate with Edgar HS students on a Tuesday evening. (which may just happen next year) Just host an event that students want to come to!! Be creative – get commitment from coaches – figure out what it takes to get them there. In all the years that I have hosted debate events, I made a profit only once, usually losing between $500 and $1500. Regardless, the tournament was a success – students had a good time, my own students took pride in hosting a successful event, and in the end it was beneficial to everyone… so please don’t chastise me because I don’t frequent your tournament. If you feel I have not been personally supportive of your event – please – ask me why! I will most assuredly give you an honest answer. But just presuming that everyone that does not frequent your tournament just wants to kill your program is just silly. Quiet frankly, if a program is in trouble, I have forgone entry fees, and have done all that I can to help the program. But please do not complain about travel when you yourself will for-go a tournament that is only 2 hours away to travel 4 hours to go to a tournament south of Milwaukee yourself. So ultimately we all make subjective decisions about tournaments we attend.

    The moment you make your debate program existent on the tournament it runs – you will be doomed to fail. A debate program should exist on its own merit, and if a school district decides to cut the program the problem exists with that school board, not the program it’s self. The day that my wife and I retire from Debate and Forensics, I most assuredly feel that the school district will dissolve the program. Not because they do not feel it worthwhile, but because it is too difficult to find someone to continue to fight the battles that EVERY coach fights… motivating students, motivating parents, motivating administration… all are true battles, and every coach fights them. (don’t kid yourself – we all fight those battles). This is a personal fear my wire and I have… and it will affect many students, and we live with that concern day in and day out. Ultimately – a program exists where there is a driving force! Whether it be a set of motivated parents, several energized students or a strong willed coach; there is always a driving power behind a program that continues to exist.

    However – this almost name calling environment does nothing for anyone! Telling me that I need to frequent certain tournaments or tell me I can not participate in some tournament is just childish (please remember the golden rule) I don’t care how the association ratifies the process of making a calendar… if several of the larger programs frequent a particular tournament – suddenly something is wrong with the process that we create a calendar? Come on… if you don’t like the way the association is being lead, run for an elected office and change the process. But this “no one came to my tournament, and because of it now my debate team will cease to exist” crap just to make us all feel guilty is BS!!! You are tired of fighting battles – this I can believe and appreciate, and that is a worthy issue, and one that would be a terrific discussion at a bull session following a coaches meeting. But this accusatory undertone does nothing but create animosity. Have a conversation with me and I will discuss anything, and maybe it will help fuel one of your true battles. I – as a fellow coach – am not the enemy. I walk beside you, let us pace one another.

    Bottom line – tournaments are frequented that leave a majority of those that attend feel like they gained something and want to come back. Create tournaments that people want to come to!

    By Michael Traas on Dec 10, 2008

50. Why would a coach make a post calling out two of the most tireless supporters of Wisconsin debate (Jon and Nick), insinuating that their travel decisions are motivated by their own “cut throat” tendencies rather than the health of Wisconsin debate? Why would a coach do that without knowledge of the budget of the schools that that coach is calling out? Additionally, why would that coach post that only one group in Wisconsin “truly care[s] about debate as a communicative and educational activity; that it functions for the benefits of kids” and that the other doesn’t. Does that coach really believe that Nick and Jon don’t care about the communicative and educational parts of the activity? Moreover, even if that coach believes that there is such a divide in the community (something that I, as a former coach of a supposedly a “cut throat, anti-educational” VSS team, find incredibly insulting), why would making such a post encourage people to support your tournament or your program (I seem to recall some saying about vinegar and honey)?

    I’m at a loss for answers for the questions I pose. The only conclusion I can make is that post was motivated by sheer jealously of the success of teams like Sheboygan. Here’s a secret that no one wants to admit: it isn’t the supposedly huge budget of Sheboygan that has made it a successful team– its the hard work of their coaches and debaters (but of course… maybe its much easier to dismiss such work as “being cut throat”). Until we can stop having coaches poison the dialogue (both publicly in forums like this one and privately at tournaments), we cannot begin to have constructive discussions about the future of Wisconsin debate.

    By Andy Nolan on Dec 10, 2008

51. Kari,

    To a point I can feel your pain over the cost of transportation and lack of northern tournaments…that said I feel as though I need to offer my own perspective as a northern coach.

    First of all I really have to disagree with your portrayal of the “two groups” working within the debate community, which you terminally break down into the “switch siders” and then the rest. This portrayal pushes my buttons far more than any other accusation or topic of discussion when it comes to debate. You characterize those in VSS as non-educational, cut-throat and thriving on the glory of the activity. Those kids who have worked their way to the VSS level of debate, and especially those who are consistently competitive at that level have done so because of hard work, and a ton of it. These kids dedicate their summers to learning the next year’s topic, spend their nights cutting evidence, making frontlines, and getting all the details squared away in respect to their affirmative and negative strategies all before debating two days and then starting again at square one for the next week. These kids flat out work hard in order to be competitive, and to say that what these kids do to get to this level and what they do at these tournaments isn’t educational is quite honestly disrespectful to what they’ve accomplished, and completely misrepresents the VSS community.

    Secondly I really would like to know what you mean by cut-throat, which to me seems to be a fairly vague phrase that doesn’t seem to have a specific meaing in this context. I will concede that VSS is definitely highly competitive, as are most “competitive” activities at their highest level of competition. Although speech is obviously an inherent element of this activity, the existence of direct competition is what separates debate from forensics, thus critiquing the competitive nature of a division seems counter-productive to the activity itself.

    No one in Varsity Switch is trying to add a notch to their belt by killing programs, and as Matt points out many Varsity Switch oriented programs have been in similar financial and logistical situations as us northern teams. Varsity Switch advocates have extremely strong feelings in defense of their form of debate, feelings that I strongly agree with, and lumping all of them together as people trying to kill northern debate is ridiculous. Other Northern programs like SPASH and at least for the past few years us at Wausau West have competed and advocated for the switch side style of debate, this isn’t a southern conspiracy.

    I’ll stipulate that I see debate in the northern part of the state slowly dying, my own program is a victim of it, but I don’t feel that this can be simply blamed on financial issues. Our program (for the first time in a long time) started to be a primarily VSS squad a few years ago, and since have been decently competitive at that level, something I proud to have been a part of. But for my program, school wide and community wide interest in the activity to me seems to be the real issue. This year I had one truly experienced debater return, one other novice from the previous year and the rest (6) were all novices. With a program of only 8 total kids, and few in the community who have had debate experience, or want to be the coach of the team, the future of the program for next year looks bleak. But what I am trying to point out here is that, at least for me, the northern problem is lack of participation, among other issues, not simply financial ones.

    As far as other costs go, having a tournament in appleton or milwaukee yeilds the same costs for me, same rental van/bus costs, same hotel costs, just the distance, which is an hour or two more, but nothing substantial that would easy my budgetary constraints. Even having two day tournaments a little closer by means the same transportation costs and either the same lodging costs or a really late night and then really early morning for the debaters, neither of which are optimal. It could just be because of the size of my program but cost of travel just hasn’t been the real inhibitor to us, again, its participation.

    Wausau West used to host a tournament, frequently the same weekend as the hilltopper classic at Marquette, so you can imagine how well that worked out for us ☺ Last year was the last year we hosted a one day tournament and didn’t get a lot of participation, mainly due to the lack of diversity we offered for events (no vss, no pf, not even sure if we did ld). As head coach this year I opted not to do a tournament. Like Mike Traas said, you have to offer a tournament that really gets people to want to come, and I didn’t feel that I had the logistical capabilities to do that. If we in the North can’t host larger and diverse tournaments, then we just have to travel, as opposed to forcing other teams to travel to smaller less diverse tournaments which doesn’t seem conducive to furthering the educational benefits of the activity either.

    We all love this activity even if we have some disagreements to how it should function or the style we prefer, but ALL of us only want this activity to succeed at its finest. I have personally invested a ton of time into the activity, both in judging at tournaments to cover obligations to hosting camps before school started without taking reimbursement for it, or directly investing my money into the program in many different ways to keep it running. Some of us coaches are full time students (I know Jon Voss is too) with other jobs paying our way through school on top of coaching and juding debate, so there are a lot of personal sacrifices involved from everyone on the circuit, regardless of if they support VSS or not. And its all because they love the activity, and only want to see it benefit as many kids as possible, and for those kids to succeed.

    By Mark Morgan on Dec 10, 2008

52. Did Jacobi just unilaterally offer Merrill the WSDT tournament? That’s like Bush invading Iran this February.

    By Rob Blagojevich on Dec 10, 2008

53. I find it very ironic that the same general arguments that were made as I took over the coaching job at SPASH are still being made as I leave that position. My comments will be general and not necessarily responsive:

    1) When I took the job at SPASH, the “realist” advice I got was that “you’re not going to beat Neenah A or Marquette A.” And for the most part, that was correct, until the last 2-3 years when we’ve been able to compete with them. Those two programs set the bar for quality VSS debate that made the rest of us either try to get better or settle for being also rans. We got better. It takes a lot of work, a great assistant coach like Matt Olson, and a lot of luck getting some talented kids. But hard work does make you competitive in VSS. Jon and Nick have taken their kids to the next level, they should be commended for it. And they should do this before they have a wife and kids.
    2) Debate has weakened in Central Wisconsin largely because of budgetary issues. But, our budget is 1/2 of what it was 8 years ago and we still compete. Money has a lot to do with success at the VSS level, particularly at the national level, but it is an obstacle and nothing more. If you want it, you get over that obstacle. Like most coaches who coach a middle class team, it might piss me off when I see the rich kids fly to tournaments every weekend and stay at a luxury hotel, but why can’t that just be motivation like it is in other activities. Nothing gives me more pleasure than going to a national tournament and having people say “What is SPASH?” and then giving them a whipping.
    3) We need to get wiser about tournaments. First of all, there is NO reason for the State tournament to be held on the second weekend of December. The idea that it might conflict with forensics is laughable. No debater is going to say they can’t miss one forensics tournament to compete at the state varsity tournament. We need to have one large tournament per month in the north and one large per month in the south. The idea of having multiple small tourneys is crazy. No competition, in bred VSS pools, etc. Some traditional tournaments might have to skip a year, but that is the price of making these things work.
    4) As I leave the activity, I see young bucks like Batterman, Voss, Bubb, and Trilling and I see a bright future for Wisconsin Debate. I see dedicated icons like Traas, Gargo and Sauer and I feel good about the past AND the present. I see Sheb North A and Marquette A and SPASH A as all possible TOC qualifiers and I feel proud of all three of them. (But still want to beat them as much as they want to beat us!!)
    5) Lastly, animosity does little to enhance Wisconsin Debate. If there are issues on which we can never collectively agree, then that means we focus on what can be agreed upon. And if the only thing we can agree upon is that we want this activity to thrive and grow, so be it. Let’s make it thrive and grow. (That said, I retire!!)

    Joe Klopotek

    By joe klopotek on Dec 10, 2008

54. I’m supposed to be working on making chemicals right now on thrid shift, so if I blow up something, it was for the good of debate. Anyway, it is clear that there are problems with maintaining debate programs because of where several teams are positioned in the state and the shrinking debate community. I can remember when they were tons of debate programs all over the state of Wisconsin. Now we have a few programs as coaches retire and no one takes their places. Let’s admit it, debate is very intimidating. We in Milwaukee are so lucky to have the Urban Debate League to revitalize debate here, but what about everywhere else. I have been talking to Kari and to Jim Sauer about the programs that used to be in their regions. I don’t think we would have the problem of budgets or lack of participation at certain tournaments if WE AS COACHES, ALL OF US went out and recruited schools in those regions. I’m not saying just a few coaches, I think the WDCA should make this a project for next year to help make the debate community stronger and to increase our ranks and get different viewpoints into WDCA. Maybe, things might not be so negative sometimes between us if we band together and establish more progrmas around the state. Any thoughts?

    By Ernest Chomicki on Dec 11, 2008

55. Dear Mr. Bubb
    You posted a comment recently referring to the Rhinelander and Wausau East teams that has absolutely infuriated me. Referring to them as “on life support” or “Whens the last time you saw Rhinelander or Wauau East at a debate tournament”. It appears you don’t pay as much attention to things as you should. I was on the Rhinelander team that won state in the J.V division this weekend. We made up 3 of the 9 teams in the J.V division. I got the chance to shake your hand this weekend and on the inside i was laughing my head off. so go ahead, tell the “best” J.V team in the state that we’re on life support. Its only fuel in our fire, and as a so called “Northern Coach” you should understand how much we love fire.

    By David Walters on Dec 15, 2008

56. David,
    congrats. question: when your school absolutly rocks one jv football game, but your varsity team sucks (or rather, doesnt have a varsity team), does your school count as good?
    sorry to tell you this, but jv is about as close to vss as little leage baseball is to pro. not only that, but jv is so fuckin illegit its not even funny. One team got voted down because they didnt shake the teams hand before round. and i also think nick ubb was refering to a vss (or you can extrapolate v4, i guess) tournie. theres alot more work put into vss than jv. get your head on straight.

    By um. no on Dec 15, 2008

57. Can we delete the previous comment?

    What, no guts?

    By Ken Sajdak on Dec 18, 2008

58. I’ll do one better. I traced the IP. 71.89.62.86 traces to Wausau, WI and Charter communications.

    Ken shouldn’t need to remind people to be respectful. Please use this site constructively.

    By Nick Bubb on Dec 18, 2008

59. The IP doesn’t seem to match up with that of any of our kids at West, as far as we can tell.

    By Thomas Hegland on Dec 21, 2008

60. um no thats cute so go ahead and be cocky because i guess you are the worlds gretest debater and apparently jv isnt even real debate. so go ahead and keep writing super debater.

    By David Walters on Jan 5, 2009

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