A Tale of Two Academic Teams

Chapter 24: Those Left Behind

"They must keep playing as they already have to go all the way, but one can still hope. And get lucky on schematics. For public forum, the luck factor comes from the coin toss, for Chantal, it's the topic draw. But policy will need to win every round from here on out" Daisy's father answers his daughter.

Whereas, in the prelims, only the first public forum round was subject to coin toss, in the playoff rounds, every PF round starts with the head judge tossing the coin.

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Meanwhile, Hank, Logan and Qian all practice free throws at Logan's home. Visibly Hank and Qian are not as good as basketball players as Logan, but once they finish a round of practice FTs, they discuss something else altogether.

"I wonder who we should ask out for tomorrow. It would be nice for us to spend a night out with someone else for once. They may be out of town until Saturday if our girlfriends make it to the final at Nationals!" Logan suggests to Qian.

"Debate; that's all they are doing there! Might be their time under the spotlight, but they're playing stupid games!" Qian rants, while mentally running through the list of girls he knew are not dating. "I watched them play and practice, and "Venomous Agendas TW" would put me to sleep by the end of their opening statement"

"Not a debater, noted" Hank says. "But Qian, I wonder whether when you say that "Venomous Agendas TW" (a.k.a. the policy pair) could put you to sleep by the end of their opening statement, is it the people on it or the format?"

"I digress but I would say the format. However, what girls we could go out with would probably be too busy at this point of the summer to have dates with us" Qian comments on Logan's plan.

"We might want to do some football drills, though" Hank comments. "And I can't keep up intellectually with Sadie, which made me want to avoid doing certain things with Rebecca"

"Same here with Chantal" Logan continues.

"Whatever we do, I say, we need to get out of the parish for a while. What about Lake Charles?" Qian asks them.

The three boys keep planning their getaway, without having the slightest idea of who could possibly want to get out of the parish and what they could want to do once out of the parish. All they agree on is take a trip out of the parish. It seems like, when major academic competitions are underway, everyone in the parish starts talking about this, until their tournament ends, we saw it with the EGMO, the HSNCT this year, and now Nats, Hank muses while Qian wonders how far out from the parish they need to get, hoping that any of the parishes bordering theirs will be enough.

"Several times this season, you claimed debate games were stupid. I never asked you this before, but what made them stupid games?" Logan asks Qian.

"What makes debate games stupid is about how nuance is often thrown out the window. It's very black-and-white even if you were able to play one without turning it into a shouting contest" Qian answers. "And even if they were able to remain level-headed, sometimes they can resort to cheap tricks with a straight face"

"Fallacies!" Hank corrects Qian.

And these games can turn to sensationalism quickly, especially between teams willing to resort to cheap tricks when otherwise mired in stalemates, but some teams found out the hard way that abuse of fallacies isn't going to fly at Nats.

Like the Venomous Agendas' playoff opponents in policy during round 8: they might have reached the quarterfinals at the ToC, the VAs eliminated them in triple-octos in a 3-0 decision. However, one more loss and the VAs are eliminated in policy, since they lost round 7 by a 2-1 decision. And power-matching means the undefeated teams play each other and then the once-defeated teams.