Coaches' Workshop - Okinawa Practice Debate

Big thanks to everyone who made it to our workshop this weekend! As promised, here's Saturday's practice debate.

The times are shortened from normal policy: Constructives are about 5 minutes, CX is about 2 minutes, and Rebuttals are roughly 3 minutes.

1AC 

1AC CX

1NC

1NC CX

2AC

2AC CX

2NC

2NC CX

1NR

1AR

2NR

2AR

Addressing a few concerns people had after the debate:

Some were distressed by the speed of some of the speeches. Policy has a certain cadence to it that becomes much easier to hear after you give it a couple tries. Some tips: look at some policy debate evidence, individually known as "cards". The "tagline" or summary of evidence at the top of the argument is usually read more slowly and deliberately, and when flowing you should try to get this down and then listen to the rest of the argument instead of scrambling to get down every word. After listening to a couple debates, you should be able to recognize when a new card is starting. Most debaters will segway with a term like "NEXT," or "AND," to give people a chance to catch up. If you don't do this in debates, you're really selling yourself short, because the judge is just as likely to miss the thesis of your argument as your opponents.

Also, an observer commented that it sounds like we're being quite mean to each other in Cross-X. Keep in mind all the debaters involved are close friends who know each other quite well (Katie and Megan are partners IRL, for example). We're a competitive bunch, and enjoy challenging each other. This is not always the case; the observer rightly brings up the point that if you don't know your opponents well, you should always err on the side of being too courteous. A little bit of competitive jabbing is healthy, but you need to know that you have that relationship with your opponents ahead of time to avoid really alienating certain judges (and potential friends).

Finally, the resolution isn't high enough to read the flow behind us, but the link to the flow at the end of the round is posted here - Flowing Practice - see if yours looks similar!

Watch it, comment, and let us know what you think!!

More lectures from the workshop will be posted tonight.