My First Tournament Competing in LD

   Recently my club, Rainmakers, hosted a Round Robin, which is a practice tournament. After researching and studying the week in advance, the first day came.
   Lincoln-Douglas values debate and speech events were held on the first day. I competed in LD, but no speech events. I must say that the resolution for LD this year is quite interesting; but maybe I'll give my thoughts on it in a later post. This was my first tournament doing Lincoln-Douglas values debate (because you can't do both forms of debate in normal tournaments), and I must admit, it was very challenging. Values debate is far more philosophical than policy debate; as a result, though policy debate is more time consuming, values debate is harder in the debate round. At the tournament I debated far better than I had ever in LD club.
   The first round my mother came to watch me, for she had never watched me debate LD, and I think that it was possibly my best round. My opponent was a novice from a first-year club. Suffice to say, her case didn't hold up very well. At the same time, she responded to some of my argument very well. I hadn't ever gotten those refuting arguments before.
   The second round I went against the most feared LD debater at the tournament, but did better than I had expected. A fellow LD debater watched my round and said that I had crushed him completely. The judge, on the other hand, had voted for him. The reason for this is because I am not the most smooth and polished speaker, and sometimes judges are persuaded by rhetoric alone. This also convinced me that this feared debater wasn't really that great, but just won mostly on speaking (several other people have said the same thing). Unfortunately, some people, well, most people don't really consider things logically, but are rather persuaded by whoever sounded more persuasive; even if someone is a horrible speaker, but they use great logic, they should easily win against someone who is a polished speaker, but doesn't use logic. Surprisingly, there are only a few judges out there that judge solely upon logic.
   The third round was somewhat like the second, except I did better, and spoke just as well as my opponent.
   The fourth round I did not debate well, and lost to a good friend of mine, who had not studied values debate, but is a policy debater. It was a humbling experience to lose to a policy debater who hadn't worked on values debate at all, but merely borrowed an affirmative and negative case from a friend. It was a fun round though, and, as they say, you learn more from the rounds you lose than the rounds you win.

Absent

I'm really not doing well at this, am I? You'd think I could write a paragraph every week, but apparently not. Well, even now I don't have a lot of time to make up for my long absence, but will try to give you a brief summary of what's happened in my family since...well, my last post.

   First and foremost, I now have two future sisters. Many of you probably know that my brother Isaac is engaged to Michelle Huggins, and the wedding is set for the end of June. What most of you don't know yet is that my brother Ezra had been courting Kyleigh Fox, and for Christmas Ezra visited her family and proposed. She of course said yes. Let me give the story in fuller detail. (At least as best as I can remember)
   "That day, the Fox family took Ezra out to the sand dunes, and they hiked up several. The sand was so hot that they would run several yards, sit down to give their feet a break from the scorching sand, and jumped up and ran several more yards. Well, after missing what he thought was the perfect opportunity, the group hiked down the ridge of a sand dune with Kyleigh in the lead. Ezra quickly motioned Nate, Kyleigh's brother, to usher the rest of the family back, leaving Kyleigh and Ezra to head on alone. By this time they were walking on the other side of the dune where the sand was not so hot because the sun was not hitting it. Finally they sat down, and this is when Ezra proposed. He said that he recited a poem, which he had written himself, in between breaths and him trying to remember it. And of course she said yes."
   And that's how I now have two future sisters. (If you would like to read the engagement poem, please click here.)

   A little more news would be that I went to my first official tournament. It was January 3-5, and I had a great experience. I learned quite a lot during this tournament, and I do hope I improved. My partner and I got a 3-3 score. 3 wins and 3 losses. Two of our wins were when we were going Negative, so we think that if we can improve our Affirmative case, we may be able to win 4 rounds next tournament, which would qualify us for Regionals. We're pretty sure that we can (and have) improved our case, as we hadn't had much time to research it before the tournament.
   I guess that I have time enough to give one more piece of news. Rosie and Susannah both will be coming to the tournament in Olympia to compete in speech events. Very exciting, and surprising!

I did well on Saturday

   Danny and I won 2 rounds out of 4, which is pretty good. Our first three rounds were against varsity/varsity teams and would very hard fought rounds. The last round we went against a varsity/novice team and won, because the negative team didn't have many arguments against us. Over all, though, I need to improve drastically, for I received 4th in speaker points for three of the rounds, while my partner, Danny, received 1st in speaker points in all four rounds. Tonight, I will be going to the club meeting and we will be debriefing the Round Robin.

Rainmakers' Round Robin

   Tomorrow will be my first debate tournament. I think that my partner and I are ready, but if we aren't, that's too bad, because we have no more time to research.
   I'm very excited because not only will all my friends from Rainmakers be there, but some friends that I made up in Bellingham at the EPIC debate camp.