A Tale of Two Academic Teams

Chapter 12: Double Compressor

"But there's a reason why you're even called Quiz Bowl Sadie in debate tournaments" Sadie's mother comments on these claims.

"Let me guess, last year's HSNCT? There are few quiz bowl-playing schools that do debate, only six in Louisiana, and even fewer quiz bowl-playing schools even have a debate player in quiz bowl"

"On the flip side, in quiz bowl tournaments, people call you Debate Girl" Sadie's mother continues.

"The HSNCT is only a piece of the puzzle, dear. You were so busy doing your research, trying to cobble coherent aff and neg constructive speeches together, rehearse both..."

"You're stressing me out! For some reason, right now, my entire life is wrapped up in these extracurriculars! I get the main things quiz bowl and debates have in common are teamwork and research. While some quiz bowlers could make coherent arguments in writing, the key difference that might sway people for one or the other is public speaking"

Sadie's mother then combs the manifests of entrants at all the debate tournaments their daughter entered for both seasons against NAQT's database, in an attempt to verify her assertion that few schools were doing both quiz bowl and debates, and it was rare at the schools that did to have a player doing both.

Why is it that, on the debate floor, I always feel in the shadow of my predecessor as the debate team captain? In quiz bowl I showed that I could score about as much as Imélie did, and more than Florence, whose quiz bowl legacy was that of a rental player. I'm better than Florence on a buzzer, and I must accomplish what Florence couldn't on the debate floor! Otherwise I'll just stick to playing quiz bowl at Tulane, and I could have done that and happily just played quiz bowl without enduring all the extras of worrying about preparing for debate tournaments or volunteering at the town's library and whatnot, Sadie reflects on these parasitic thoughts that keeps reoccurring before she can even think of rehearsing either of her opening statements.

And then the Teams videoconference call lights up, prompting her to conduct a training session with, of all things, Detroit Catholic Central's public forum team. Which she knew had no quiz bowler on it. Especially not after this disaster of a last season, which she knew from past training sessions with DCC was partially caused by having to form a second PF duet after the original speaker that caused Lance, a then-senior called in from the quiz bowl team, to play at the INI became healthy again. This season, DCC has only one PF team.

"Honey, could you please keep quiet?" her father complains in front of her.

"I'm rehearsing for debate-State!" Sadie then turns her focus to this training session.

Which begins with Sadie delivering her opening statement on the affirmative. Then Lance's former teammate delivers his opening statement on the negative.

"You might want to work on the transition between arguments because you seem to be stuffing evidence left and right, and you really should avoid using complicated words the judge(s) could have difficulty understanding, until evidence forces you to do otherwise" Sadie comments to the DCC team. "Then you can explain your argument using simpler language"

"While my teammate reworks his negative constructive speech, from hearing your speech, I have a better idea of how I should do my own affirmative constructive speech" Francis then proceeds to rewrite his own speech.

Even though I know DCC has no real hope of winning Michigan's state qualifiers, I'm still doing it because I feel it's necessary for me to get some practice with people outside the team, Sadie thinks while shaking on her seat, thinking that, after making some changes to the opening statement, the time came to go to the rebuttal.