Whereas one of the highlights of the previous debate season was breaking into the quarterfinals of a major tournament attended by teams on the national circuit, all of this was overshadowed by a top-5 at the HSNCT since the Venomous Agendas didn't advance past the semi-finals at either the district qualifier or the state championship last year. In Sadie's junior year, Sadie's teammate was coming into its own, and this season promises better.
After getting their asses handed to them last season, DCC stopped attending tournaments like the Isidore Newman Invitational, or those other tournaments that people on the national circuit attend in an attempt to get to the Tournament of Champions, and this season, I'm the only INI attendee playing quiz bowl at all, let alone at the HSNCT. On the national circuit I'm nicknamed Quiz Bowl Sadie because I'm a more seasoned quiz bowl player than virtually everyone else attending national circuit tournaments. That, even though I only attended 3 tournaments on the national circuit: Grapevine Classic, Isidore Newman and Columbia Online Invitational. Obviously the INI was where I performed best, breaking into the semi-final, but we still finished 2-3 at Grapevine and 4-2 in prelims at Columbia, Sadie reflects on this debate season, while she continues her research for the district qualifiers and state championship, one week apart. But she finds herself unable to concentrate, and her parents can't help but notice their daughter struggling on the Sunday night after quiz bowl-State...
"What's going to happen to me if I do poorly at the state championship and I don't attend debate-Nationals?" Sadie asks, crying.
"You are already attending the HSNCT, honey. There's a reason why you are the quiz bowl captain for the Venomous Agendas" Sadie's father points out to Sadie.
"I can't just... settle for ED at Tulane! The next two weeks will decide my collegiate future!"
"What do you mean, the next two weeks will decide my collegiate future? Wouldn't two HSNCT participations in a row help, too?" Sadie's father retorts her daughter as to the value of extracurriculars.
I'm sure Imélie would be thrilled to have my daughter with her playing quiz bowl for the Green Wave. All season her quiz bowl teammates kept comparing my daughter to Imélie, but it's only after the AIME that Sadie started answering more M&S questions because the pre-AIME M&S player was demoted thanks to his post-AIME underperformance on a buzzer, Sadie's father reflects on his daughter's claims regarding college.
"If I wanted to aim higher than Tulane, you might have told me to focus on one or two areas for extracurriculars, but if I do so, even though both activities I chose were activities I can see clearly how they're connected, my case for how they're connected is much stronger if I perform well in both. This means we must attend at least one of the Tournament of Champions or the NSDA Nationals. I only have one silver bid to the ToC, earned at Isidore Newman, so it's not a guarantee I'll attend the ToC, and getting to the latter is tantamount to winning debate-State! Personally, I see either tournament has the same value to colleges, and they have the same value as the HSNCT" Sadie goes on a tirade.
"To the parish's eyes, you're the darling of the less mathematically-inclined. You know by now the parish newspaper tends to cover in-depth the whole parish's extracurriculars at all levels and puts more weight on academic extracurriculars than most. But you also know the hype for the USAMO means the hype over winning quiz bowl-State will only last until the USAMO begins" Sadie's father lectures her.
"And you are lucky there's even any hype for quiz bowl here at all. In a lot of schools in the quiz bowl-playing world, as well as the debate circuit, players of either one are labeled nerds, even players you know are journeymen at best. Players doing both are uncommon" Sadie tries to rebut his father.
"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.
"The big difference between a rebuttal and an opening statement is that you can't just rehash your opening statement. You can certainly use the same evidence for both, and you should use prep time either here or at the next stage. Of course, crossfires is where you can point out the flaws in arguments and all that. This is where flowing shines" Sadie explains them, after hearing the rebuttal is not the same as the opening statement.
"We're not satisfied with our coach at Detroit Catholic since he spends so much time with the Lincoln-Douglas debaters" one of the DCC players adds. "Quiz Bowl Sadie is much better"
"Detroit Catholic? What is the meaning of this?" Sadie's father comes down to her position to shout at her daughter. "Why... why? Why would you practice with DCC to the point of DCC even considering you as their coach?"
"Everything began when DCC attended a tournament I attended last season. Back then I was just a rookie on the debate circuit. But it was only at last year's HSNCT that one of their players – that year there were only 3 players at Isidore Newman that even played quiz bowl – actually got my contact information, and gave it to his then-debate partner, who is still playing for DCC, believing he'd have more use for it than that player would" Sadie explains herself, while her father must have forgotten about her coaching DCC.
"All right then. You can continue training with whoever you want"
And that specific player is paying me as they would have a semi-private coach! Sadie thought while realizing that her mother had some interesting facts (from her mother's point of view) about the earlier fight, late at night, after Sadie's practice with DCC ended.
"No one won quiz bowl-State and debate-State the same season. And never did we win debate-State in any format. Also, no one at last year's TOC or NSDA Nationals scored as much as you did at the HSNCT. There were only five players total that even played at nationals in both forensics and quiz bowl last year" Sadie's mom runs down her findings to her daughter
"Mom, no one did it in Louisiana, but maybe someone in a different state might have won quiz bowl-State and debate-State in the same season. I might be the first, but so what?"
"The highest HSNCT scorer at NSDA Nationals was an international extemper last year and played for Boston Latin. You scored about fifty percent more than that guy"
"IX is a speech event. What about actual debate then?" Sadie asks.
"He played PF for Greenhill B. You scored more than three times as much as that guy"
"I'm sure you're telling me all of this to cheer me up. How much pride do you think we get, as a family or as a parish, if I attend both NSDA Nationals and HSNCT, and subsequently score the most PP20TUH at the HSNCT among that group, but fail to win either one?"
"Just playing at NSDA Nationals would require winning district qualifiers but is more realistic than playing at TOC at this point"
"Might be nice as a parish newspaper factoid, either post-HSNCT or post-NSDA Nationals, but this is not something people will remember me for outside the town. This is an unhealthy obsession, and it would be even worse if we win the HSNCT and I attend the NSDA Nationals!" Sadie warns her mother.
"How so?" her mother asks her.
"In the debate world, people attending national debate tournaments are not expected to win it all in an unrelated, national academic competition. It would raise questions if such a thing was to happen. For me, it would mean winning the HSNCT first; while it could cause opponents to underestimate me at NSDA Nationals, I cannot rely on it"
"You stress out way too much"
And don't remind me about how the Venomous Agendas go into the district qualifiers and debate-State as the favorites in public forum and international extemp, more than ever my mom makes me so stressed out! As if the HSNCT didn't already exert enough pressure as it is! Sadie then goes to sleep but has ghosts of Florence as well as these other players her mother mentioned earlier in the night tormenting her in dreams. "You might have outscored all of us at the HSNCT, but you never won anything on the debate floor!" The Greenhill player then throws his HSNCT statline at her, 11.73 PP20TUH, and the Boston Latin IX'er follows suit, 23.82 PP20TUH, and realizing she didn't play against either one at the HSNCT.
She simultaneously realizes she didn't play against either one at the HSNCT, and that, a full month before Isidore Newman, she actually played a practice round against that very Greenhill quiz bowler, Santosh. That one practice round that made her feel confident enough in her game to even attend inter-state tournaments. A round she insisted him to play even though, at the time, she considered his pair second-sextile for some reason. With that realization made, she then awakens.
Once she awakens, she then proceeds to text her boyfriend: "Please, no dates until the district qualifier, but I invite you to go to NSDA-State with me this weekend; this tournament counts so much for me. If you cannot attend the district qualifier, perhaps you can attend LHSSL-State next Saturday instead"
The answer from the linebacker she calls a boyfriend comes only in the morning, after finding herself having lost hair all night. "What makes you think I want to watch other people debate one topic for an entire weekend? Even if it was to root for Venomous Agendas NGL, a.k.a. your team" Qian refers to the PF team entered into the district qualifiers by its codename on the debate team's depth chart. Sadie Naath and Joe Glumack-Layton.
"We didn't do anything for weeks, you didn't attend quiz bowl-State, and you'll get a chance to see history in the making in Bâton-Rouge, just on Saturday though" Sadie retorts, realizing the district qualifier is held at Bâton-Rouge Magnet this year.
Naturally, since not everyone in town liked mathletics, a limited subset of the population started following debate instead, which the debate team referred to as the humanities and social studies faction. And, to their eyes, as the debate team captain, Sadie was the faction's mascot. Especially because Gaston and the other Congressional debate players were out of the picture since district qualifiers in early February. The school had 2 House and Senate players apiece, and none of them advance to nationals.