A Tale of Two Academic Teams

Chapter 5: Lunch with DCC

"You don't seem well. What's wrong?" Sadie asks while Lance is frozen in place.

"This place reminds me of something I'd rather forget" Lance answers, lacking coherence in his voice.

"Does it have anything to do with me or not?"

"Yes, so maybe we should eat somewhere else for lunch. You choose then"

The only things he could possibly want to forget that involve me are either this quiz bowl game or this debate tournament. Since there were no questions about East Asia during that game, it must be about this debate tournament, Sadie thinks, while Lance just isn't comfortable opening up about it. Not with her anyway. After Sadie picks a restaurant...

"What I can say is that, at DCC, while sports such as football, basketball and hockey are often part of the deal, DCC debate was a train wreck. Until this season, debate was intramural, and, for some reason, the debate team coach went around and looked to the quiz bowl team for reinforcements when it became clear they wouldn't have enough students to compete the way they wanted"

"It was the other way around for us last year, we asked the debate team for reinforcements in quiz bowl" 

"Just shut up and eat" Lance, still reeling in from these flashbacks from Isidore Newman, tells her.

So rather than to eat Asian food, they end up eating Italian cuisine instead. Much less likely to trigger bad memories to him, and then Sadie feels like other players are watching them. Especially since other teams in the morning session had the same idea of eating what they couldn't eat in their hometowns. In towns whose gastronomic palettes just weren't very varied at all, especially true of those teams whose hometowns are away from the big cities. Like the Venomous Agendas'. Invariably one or two players also took other contestants on dates.

"You seem a little... sheltered, if I may. However, I don't think it's specific to DCC" Sadie comments on Lance's background.

"Sheltered? In what sense?" Lance asks, confused about what sheltering means.

"When you have parents that prevent you from, say, meeting girls outside of things such as the HSNCT, which leads you to attend DCC..."

"And once at DCC, it seems like every second of your life is programmed if you aim for stuff such as Chicago and the Ivies. What about you?"

"I'm lucky that, while the school imposes restrictions on how many AP courses you can take on any given year, as well as how many varsity teams you can be on – you can only be on two varsity teams at most – most people are satisfied with attending non-elite colleges, and when you live in a rural area, there is only so much parents can do to shelter children"

Speaking of which, Imélie believed that whatever community service she did plus being on the math team for three non-consecutive years and on the quiz bowl team for two (with captaincy for the last one) was enough for Tulane specifically because of the Louisiana auto-admission clause under early decision. This year's Venomous Agendas graduating class is less ambitious than the last one.

"It's a little awkward that you're talking about sheltered upbringing, especially since it's entirely possible some of us, some of the other contestants also, could be hearing us talking about that right now"

"True!" the Beijing #2 student exclaims from the table right next to them. "I don't have a choice in anything I do. On the other hand, I am given everything I need"

With an emphasis on need. Because that particular student doesn't seem to have extravagant material desires, but like the American couple next to him, the Beijing #2 student, too, comes there to eat what he didn't normally eat. So even pizza, to him, was not something he commonly ate. Much less the Marsala veal Sadie eats, or the lobster Lance eats, with them ordering gelato and tiramisu for dessert respectively. Once the desserts arrive at their table...

"If you want, I will take some of your tiramisu, I never ate tiramisu myself. In exchange of which you can have a scoop of my sea-salt caramel gelato"

"Your gelato is ice cream... not that different from what I am eating at home. The debate coach assumed that, because we learn and research high volumes of information for quiz bowl, and quickly, we can do the same for debating. That's why the debate coach looked at the quiz bowl team for reinforcements so that we can attend the Isidore Newman Invitational"

Lance then gets flashbacks of this debating disaster. The debate team was short one player for public forum because the second speaker was injured in a hockey game the week before the tournament, badly enough for the original player I replaced to miss it, and it was a miracle that DCC could even play at the Isidore Newman Invitational to begin with. The debate coach sought reinforcements in earnest so that they wouldn't waste their public forum entry. The DCC squad had ten players, of which I was the captain on a dare, they fielded a team in public forum varsity, one in policy varsity, one in duo interp and then one player in each Lincoln-Douglas division, one in informative speaking and finally, one in Congressional debate. And then came this atrocious defeat to the Venomous Agendas, and DCC finished this tournament 1-5 in PF. I bet the debate coach ceased asking the quiz bowl team for reinforcements after this humiliating defeat at the Isidore Newman invitational!

"It's weird that you seem to be willing to talk about what made this moment you want to forget, well, happen, and not the moment itself. Even though I clearly evoke stuff you don't want to remember, you might find it useful to have my contact information, and likewise me with yours"

Warren has no right to assume that any future players earmarked by the debate team for quiz bowl will be history/RPMSS specialists. No more than he can assume any future quiz bowl players earmarked by the mathletics team would be math & science specialists. That, even though past Venomous Agendas players that cross-played for either one performed best in quiz bowl according to the content of the second activity, Sadie reflects on her encounter with DCC A's debater, while Lance reluctantly gives his contact information to her, before he pays the bill for the lunch.

After the payment is made for the lunch, the DCC debater then shares Sadie's contact information to his former debate partner, who still have a debate season left to play before graduation.