In the weeks after the Grapevine Classic, which was a complete disaster for her, Sadie mostly kept to herself, and she inexplicably cries at lunchtime on Friday.
"Has my own debating talent vanished?" Sadie asks out loud.
"What do you mean, your debate talent has vanished? I might have heard a thing or two about debating last year on the morning announcements, but I didn't realize you were part of it!" Qian, the linebacker asks her.
"Chantal used to have an inferiority complex, but now I'm the one who feels like I have no business debating! I can't just... stick to quiz bowl! I crumbled to dust as a debater, what will my collegiate future look like now?" Sadie sobs again.
"What makes you think you crumbled to dust as a debater?" Qian questions her.
"I finished two-three at Grapevine, whereas I went to the semifinals at debate-State... you can't advance to the semifinals at debate-State with a two-three preliminary record! If that's not a sign of regression, I don't know what it is. But I mustn't let the team down!"
"Maybe you should cool off a bit. Maybe you should watch our home opener" the linebacker insists her.
"What's your name then? I'm not familiar with who's who on the football team, I was so focused on debate prep" Sadie asks him.
Maybe watching the football team's home opener is a good thing. Even though quiz bowl plays its first tournament tomorrow, Tal Atkins. For weeks I kept doing my research on the debate topic, as well as for quiz bowl... and now people all across the circuit refer to me as Quiz Bowl Sadie! And not just at DCC either, she ruminates, while the linebacker stands ready to pop the question.
"Qian. My last girlfriend graduated last year, and I have one free ticket left for the football game, what about I take you to tonight's game?"
"What position do you play?" Sadie asks.
"Linebacker"
Ever since I have been on this team, the greatest female stars on academic teams, except for one, all had footballer boyfriends. So, while Sadie has apparently fallen from grace as a debater, she used to be good. If a date is part of what could get her back on track... Qian muses while she waits for Sadie's answer, which he feels takes a while.
Now that Chantal is the star of the debate team, until such time I can, relatively speaking, return to her level, she'll have a much easier time on the dating market, Sadie thought, also reflecting as to what future she would have in dating. Richter was a very passive date and basically dated her in name only. I may as well date Qian before Chantal finds a date!
"Oh yes!" Sadie answers as enthusiastically as was feasible given her issues.
"See you at the stadium tonight!" Qian then replies back, before handing her the ticket.
She then gives her contact information to him prior to the game. The date itself is not the most spectacular in the world, and she spends much of the football game reworking her opening statements based on the judgments from Grapevine and updating her files as necessary. Not the best place in the world to do so, but better than nothing at all.
But before the players get their stuff in order, in the dead of night, they get in the parents' cars, with their textbooks and other materials so they can do whatever homework they can. Upon arriving at Shreveport for their quiz bowl tournament, Warren harangues the players...
"Before the tournament begins, I hope Sadie can take up Imélie's mantle and score as much as she did. It worked for us last year, Debate Girl" Warren then fixates on Sadie.
"I better not mess this up. I am struggling in debates right now, the cat is now out of the bag. But if I quit debate, I may as well ask Chantal if she wants to use the debate team's earmark" Sadie tries to psych herself up.
"I know you have big shoes to fill, Sadie, but last year you scored a lot in this tournament. I'm confident you can score well here this year, too" Warren bases his hopes on her.
"The difference was that Imélie was our science specialist last year, and this year I am" Cristiano, a mathlete, comments, as he is called upon to play with Sadie on the top team.
With Imélie, we finished in the top-5 at the HSNCT. Without Imélie? Everything will depend on that new mathlete vs her. Imélie was fantastically smart, I might not be as smart as she is, but this starts to weigh heavily on me, Sadie keeps musing as she shakes in her seat, while returning players overheard the words Debate Girl and... wow.
"Good luck, Debate Girl, you're going to need it now that Imélie is in college!" Stan, a Cistercian player, comments on how Imélie's graduation is going to affect the Venomous Agendas.
"It remains to be seen whether Cristiano, the mathlete, and I can make up for the loss of Imélie"
Oh my God, not in quiz bowl too? It's already bad enough on the debate floor to feel like I don't measure up to my predecessors, or worse still, to my current teammates, this is making my stomach turn! Sadie realizes just how much pressure she is made to feel. However, Tal Atkins isn't nearly as high-profile a quiz bowl tournament as Grapevine is for debating.
"Just wait for me, I need to go to the bathroom" Sadie signals to her teammates.
"Come back to the game room in about fifteen minutes" Warren warns her again.
Poor Sadie! She rushes to the bathroom, ulcerated by the sadistic amount of pressure bearing down on her. The sheer number of butterflies in her stomach is making it harder to breathe and her heartbeat goes up, and not just because of the speed at which she is running to the bathroom. Ouch. That was so not cool.
She vomits as soon as she could find one toilet to vomit in, which was not easy despite females being in the minority. Then the gastric butterflies get out, but even when there is no proverbial butterfly in her stomach remaining, her headaches remain, made worse by the gastric acid in her mouth, which forces her to rinse her mouth before she can even think of taking painkillers. Here's to hoping my painkillers will kick in early in the prelims, she thinks right after she rinsed her mouth, and before taking them.
Upon returning to her quiz bowl team, which has already handed over the school's buzzer system to the tournament director, she struggles to focus, although not as much as when she first arrived at Caddo Magnet. And Cistercian is their first opponent; this year around, Cistercian only fields one team.
"This is round one of the Tal Atkins Memorial, pitting Cistercian..." the moderator announces to the teams at the start of the game.
Then she feels a little sluggish early in the game, but nonetheless manages to answer some tossups, mostly on history and RPMSS as was usual last season. Like a tossup on the Korean War, on which she buzzes in before the end of the second clue, but for some reason she doesn't say it immediately upon buzzing, despite having spent two months debating on sanctions against North Korea last season:
"One second..." the moderator signals Sadie.
"Demilitarized zone" she answers while shaking in her seat, fearing she'd eat a neg if she answers too slowly.
"Fifteen"
Phew! Happy to see that I'm still able to play quiz bowl and that it's only about my debating skill having vanished, not my entire intellect. That said, even if only a specific aspect of my smarts vanished, it's still worrisome, she muses after this nerve-wracking five seconds of an answer.
Literature, however, proves Cistercian's greatest strength on the buzzer and this is what keeps the game close. Close enough to force a situation where the final tossup decides the game, and when Cristiano hears clues about acidity constants, he buzzes in...
"Chemical equilibrium" Cristiano answers after buzzing in.
"Ten. For ten points each..." the moderator reads to the team, now that the Venomous Agendas secured the game.
As with last season, the Venomous Agendas' A-team finish in the top 2 positions of the preliminary pool, thereby securing their ticket to quiz bowl-State, and all they have to do is finish in the top 3 positions in the playoffs. Once they come together at a table for lunch, over pizzas the chaperone ordered while the seventh game was played:
"For me, this tournament represents the opportunity to show the school that my intellect has not completely vanished. Grapevine two weeks ago was a complete disaster, and I feel like my own debating talent has vanished during the summer" Sadie begins speaking.
"What do you mean, Grapevine was a disaster to you?" Cristiano asks her.
"I don't feel comfortable talking about what made it a disaster. So, while we are qualified for quiz bowl-State, last year Imélie and her gang semi-slacked off during the playoffs here at Tal Atkins. We will not do so this year! This is not going to fly at the HSNCT!" Sadie comments on Cristiano's question.
"Damn right, Debate Girl!" a Mandeville player shouts in Sadie's direction.
The team took their advice to heart, and they win the next two games. And the final round was... wow. Whoever would win this game, wins the tournament.
"This is round ten of the Tal Atkins Memorial, pitting Mandeville..." the moderator announces the game.
Mandeville. Back in 2023 they were worse than we were, they somehow qualified for the state championship then, and later withdrew, but now they are legitimately qualified. It was the one school that forced the LQBA to make changes to how teams can qualify for quiz bowl-State, Warren muses, while the game proceeds in a way that both teams traded the lead often, and, with one last tossup to go, the Venomous Agendas are trailing by 20 points.
I remember about clues in this tossup being part of the contentions (arguments) or evidence mentioned in a losing reason for decision (RFD, or judgment to the layperson) at Grapevine, and everything in this tossup reminds me of that RFD... Sadie is violently reminded of her failures at Grapevine and gets headaches so intense her head hits the buzzer as her head feels heavier with every new word being read by the moderator. The impact is felt one word before the power mark.
"Biodiversity" Sadie answers in a raspy voice.
"Fifteen. For ten points each..."
All they have to do now is answer one bonus correctly and they win the game. But since there is no consistency in the difficulty ordering of the bonuses, here it appears the hardest two bonus parts were asked first. And neither is answered correctly. It's all down to one bonus, the Mandeville players think, while watching, powerless, the Venomous Agendas control that bonus.
"Claudel" Anna, the fine arts player answers.
"Ten points for the bonus, and that's the game"
"Yay, we won this tournament! We made it to the HSNCT!" Cristiano exclaims while he realizes Sadie scored exactly one science tossup for the entire tournament, the biodiversity one.
"This means I can focus more on debating this season. I don't need to worry about quiz bowl as much now" Sadie adds her conclusion.
"Congratulations, Mandeville, on your first HSNCT qualification!" the moderator exclaims.
But upon returning at her hometown, Sadie makes a grim realization. If I can still play quiz bowl at that level, maybe, maybe I can get back to the level of debating play I used to possess! But we will need to practice, reviewing our judgments one by one, especially from Grapevine, and to a lesser extent, from both state championships last season, our evidence, as our basis. I feel inferior to Chantal right now, but perhaps some of our decisions were close enough for it just to require some targeted fine-tuning when practicing!
She then proceeds to text Joe about the realization in question. "Grapevine is a wake-up call for you. You must step up to the plate, you must attend online practices with DCC, share all our evidence with them, and they shall share their evidence with us" she sends, prior to scheduling a new training session on Sunday night with DCC. Knowing how religious DCC players are, they won't want to miss mass on Sunday morning.
On Sunday night, a red-faced Sadie is holding a pre-session meeting with Joe at her house:
"The way we have been playing, there's no way we can win the state championship or play at NSDA Nats. We will need to review our own judgments from Grapevine, practice in areas not already covered in previous drills, and drill with DCC!" Sadie shouts at Joe.
"Why drill with DCC? Don't they enter inter-state tournaments, too?" Joe asks.
"No. They didn't attend Grapevine, they won't attend Isidore Newman again. They just want to stick to their local circuit"
"You have been way too hard on yourself!" Joe shouts at Sadie, while Sadie sends what evidence she has on hand to DCC's pair.
They then spend the night drilling with DCC on things the pair deem important based on Grapevine's RFDs. Which DCC's pair is in no position to contest, especially given how inexperienced Francis is in tournaments.
But Sadie told nothing to the DCC pair about their result at Grapevine for weeks, because she believes doing so would cause them to discontinue their coaching relationship.
"Joe, I'll have you practice with DCC until the earlier of these happen: our season ends, or their season ends. It's the only way we can ensure that you get adequate practice for you to improve. As I said, we'll need to practice in an organized manner. If you don't shape up, Joe, I'll have Chantal replace you!" Sadie keeps shouting at Joe, irritated by his attitude.
"And then you will need to drill her in the specifics of public forum; the main things she might be able to do right now that could be useful to us are write and deliver an opening statement and do research" Joe retorts to his teammate.
"You're right, it would be counter-productive to do so. I will give you the schedule of DCC's practices. And even intensify drill schedules during the holidays if necessary!"
"It's more for you guys than us for the winter, since, you see, in Michigan, the debate season mostly takes place in Fall. Our local winter circuit has, like, two tournaments for public forum, DCFL-PF, and NSDA-State" Francis explains to them.
"DCFL?" Joe asks, confused.
"The Detroit Catholic Forensic League. The only ones doing LD in Michigan" David talks.
Of course, debate has more tournaments left on its schedule than quiz bowl does, but the following day at school, Qian goes up and sees Sadie before Qian goes to class:
"Hi Sadie, how did your quiz bowl tournament go?" Qian asks her.
"We won... but there's only so much quiz bowl can do for my confidence on the debate floor. I need help, and I... confess debate is not helping with my issues" Sadie then tells Qian.
"What do you mean, debating is part of what causes your problems?" Qian asks, while Sadie senses his lack of familiarity with the debating world, and what makes debating stressful.
"It's OK, I will talk about it at some point, just not in front of my teammates" Sadie responds, while Chantal is approaching her, with questions on hand.
"Sadie!" Chantal exclaims, while she notices Sadie with the team's middle linebacker. "I didn't know you were dating a football player!"
"We only started dating last week. Because you're the star of the debate team, it's only a question of time until someone takes an interest in dating you, if past trends are any indication" Qian then tells Chantal.
Public forum might have taken a hit at Grapevine, but I wonder if Qian is dating her on the basis of her quiz bowl prowess, and, honestly, is that enough to make him endure Sadie's issues? Chantal muses, realizing that it's a little early in the school year, she can still date someone later.
"I might be wondering what kind of guy could want to date an international extemper. There might be something for everyone, but all people seem to know about debate in general, and certainly international extemp, is that you talk about current events, history and politics" Chantal comments.
Way to make me feel inferior again! Sadie may not have done it intentionally, but she's right. Sadie dated Richter last year, when she was still the star of the debate team, Imélie dated a fullback, Jennifer, our star mathlete, dates the starting quarterback, Rebecca dates an offensive guard, and this is just the girls I personally knew on academic teams, Chantal muses, while backing away from the scene.
"What about we talk about your issues after our respective practices later today?" Qian suggests to Sadie.
"Yes, especially since you're not on an academic team, it's a fresh viewpoint I'd then get before I get an appointment with a therapist"