Apparently, Lynbrook MB, who were 11th seed, lost one of their ballots due to the judge confusing sides – they should have been 4-1,12-3 not 3-2,11-4.
Together with the above comment, this means that 10th seed (Lynbrook KU) plus whoever was 9th seed shouldn’t have cleared.
It’ll be a headache to figure out how to assign POI points for this.
P.S. @ above poster – we have matching avatars! woot
Do you know who they were paired with in Rd 1? I don’t have the packet (it hasn’t been posted yet), but it may or may not have had an effect on seedings.
Also, presumably if they had not been credited with a loss rd 1, they would have faced a ‘tougher’ team round 3 when we were lag pairing…so that’s the complication with the error.
Was it very clear that they won on the ballot or was it a judge confusing sides issues? It’s not impossible for tab to make mistakes, but all ballots were double checked by people who were not entering them in the computer, so usually if it is missed twice it is because either the judge put the wrong code in as the winner or confused sides and we didn’t catch it.
Based on my discussions with them, I can pretty safely say that Rylan and Akshay will pick Congress over Parli. If they did so, who would be the alternates?
I’m currently the Parli coach at Mountain View HS and Assistant Coach of Congress/Parli at Dougherty Valley HS, and one thing I’ve been pondering is the dearth of circuit style tourneys. Aside from the Cali Cup, which is btw an excellent tourney, there seems to be a real void. Would there be any interest in hosting a sort of Cali Cup 2? I have access to a deep pool of qualified judges, as well as relationships with institutions that would be willing to host, but I want to see if there’s any interest first. Thanks!
@Armand: I don’t think the community wants to adopt a highly technical style. When I put together CalCup, I made sure there was a balance of progressive and traditional judges in the pool, as long as both had former debate experience. We’ve seen the high school LD community split between circuit and local, and we’ve seen college policy virtually die out due to being overly technical, so let’s be careful to avoid that in high school parli. On the other hand, there is widespread discontent about quality of judging in elims (just read the Stanford thread), especially among the top teams, so I think there’s probably some demand for a circuit style tournament, as long as it doesn’t swing too far into the NDT/CEDA direction.
I wouldn’t recommend replicating CalCup – with the new Bishop O’Dowd tournament, there are probably enough “elite” tournaments already. What we need is a circuit-style regular invite. Also, some better judging at SCU wouldn’t hurt (although SCU has been decent compared to the rest of invites).
P.S. I told Melan he can give you my email, just in case you lost the one I gave you at Copeland. That, or you can add me on FB.
A Cal cup 2 would be awesome, as the O’ Dowd tournament will be nothing like a traditional tournament at all. And what’s wrong with parli getting technical? It will never have the chance to get as technical as policy just by its nature, and it gives it more depth. New theory arguments to play with, kritiks, etc. Fun stuff.
@Artem: Obviously parli, especially HS parli, will never become super technical by it’s nature. The idea wouldn’t be to make this CEDA—just better than league tourneys. The fact that you get crappy judges even at Stanford is somewhat discomforting.
What exactly is the Bishop O’Dowd tourney like?
The conception would be to have an elite entry and an open entry. An open entry so anyone can go, and an elite one for prestige purposes—you’d have to qualify.
But hey, apparently we’re hybriding at Willamette, so we’ll talk soon!
“The conception would be to have an elite entry and an open entry. An open entry so anyone can go, and an elite one for prestige purposes—you’d have to qualify.”
The English-speaking part of my brain feels violated in so many ways after attempting to understand those two sentences.
Until the judging pool at tournaments becomes better, there is no chance for Parli to become more technical. Lay judges are not going to be able to understand theory unless it is extremely well articulated and even then it is difficult to pull off without hammering substantive points. The three Analy teams of 2k8 were able to pull off a good balance of introducing LD style theory and pre-round prep to win rounds, but this is a strategy that is being deviated away from by the community and inhibited by CHSSA. The moment you have a non-lay judging pool is the moment that you will have debaters who used to do policy or LD start introducing that into the event in order to win easy rounds because they will be able to easily pick up in front of judges against opponents that don’t know how to counter what would be considered very simple stock shells in LD or policy.
If I was the sole judge adjudicating a round, the two teams would want to take a very different strategy to win the round than they would want to take in front of a lay judge. Adaptability is always key in picking up ballots, the best debaters in any event are able to adapt to their judge. Unfortunately not all Parli debaters have the experience necessary to be able to adapt to non-lay judges in front of judges that would be considered to be good judges at a circuit LD tournament. In the 2k7-2k8 year, Analy teams picked up a number of out rounds very easily because we knew our judges to be former LD circuit debaters or college debaters and we knew we could go fast and dominate on substance and theory.
Unfortunately, it is a rare occasion that this opportunity presents itself. You all complain about the quality of judges in Parli, but the fact of the matter is that the event doesn’t deserve what you would consider a “quality judge.” Circuit LD and Policy would not exist without spreading, without complicated framework and theory debates, and without k’s, etc. Those events require judges that can keep up on those types of arguments (and I frequently find myself unable to do so, but the fact remains that I am preferable in the LD pool to a parent because I can flow speed and I can follow the analytics if explained). Tournaments like Stanford have two options:
1. Guarantee good judges to varsity policy and varsity LD so that they can keep their bids and keep their prestige so that they can continue to make money from their tournament.
2. Spread the good judges between every event, which would lead to a lot of bored judges sitting in a PuFo/Parli round and a lot of parents not knowing what is going on in LD/Policy.
The less technical events get the shaft.
The easiest way (and the only immediate way) to counter this is to bring better judges. At Stanford, LD and Policy debaters were required to bring qualified judges that were reviewed by the tournament to ensure quality. Even if judges are not reviewed by tournament directors, you can improve the quality of the judging pool by bringing your friends who graduated from your school and are still in the area to tournaments as your judge instead of your mom. Berkeley did not have as stringent of requirements on judges, and the effects of this are obvious already.
Side effect of improving the judging pool: the event will become more technical. It is a fact that when teams are debating in front of an experienced debater, they will take a different strategy and will strive for easier wins, which will involve being more technical.
These are just my opinions on the event, reject them if you want (but I expect to see a. standard b. violation c. impacts d. voters (that’s a joke, don’t run theory in a comment thread on POI)).
Sidenotes: I can’t wait until CHSSA does stuff like ban theory arguments in Parli or place constraints on WPM. Colored paper was more than bad enough.
Also: I look forward to seeing GGSA teams at State Quals in two weeks. Some notes on differences in how the tournament will be run over previous years (this is the latest I have heard, no guarantees it will be the same later). Rounds one and two will be random. Rounds three and four will be power protect (as in 2-0 hit 0-2, 1-1 hit 1-1, then 3-0 hit 0-3, 2-1 hit 1-2). Then everyone with two losses will be dropped after round four and we will continue as we did in previous years. The goal of this is to make it so that good teams don’t drop early, but I don’t think it solves.
I look forward to seeing everyone in the prep room, we’ll have some fun.
The CBSR just had its state qualifier yesterday. Once the full results are out, I’ll forward them to you Artem. In the mean time, four teams qualified for state.
1st place: Great Oak High School – Philip Jr. Tacason & Isaak Cuenco
2nd place: Claremont High School – Storm Dowd-Lukesh & Pranay Yeturu
3rd place: Claremont High School – Daniel Musa & Patrick Wilkie
4th place: Redlands High School – James Pesavento & Gia Karpouzis
I’m curious…as a parli coach, how do I prepare my teams for topics at tourneys? It seems that the selection of issues barely references current events at all. For a tourney not to even MENTION libya or the middle east in a time like this, and instead do random non resolutions like deporting illegal immigrant criminals (not only is that huge side skew for the aff, is it not actually supposed to be status quo?)? Part of this is griping, yeah, but part is genuinely attempting to understand the logic behind topic decisions, so I can focus my lectures and research better.
Prep is key to success. We used to maintain a 100+ page document of briefs, stock cases, and shells that we could use for just about any topic. Having a wide breadth of prep helps significantly, but that doesn’t necessarily solve for bad topics. You just have to hope that the opposing team is just as unprepared as you are when a bad topic comes down the pipe.
I was looking at the Parli section of the Joy page for the state tournament, and there is contradicting information on it.
It says both:
“Debaters MAY consult with any other competitors during prep time.”
and
“If it breaths and it is not your debate partner you can’t talk to it. ”
I noticed that months ago and emailed Nermin Kamel about it, and she knows about it–and said that she would change it months ago. So send her an email about the error (CaHSSA@yahoo.com).
I went last year and am planning on going this year. It’s great. Very fun and they have different aspects of debate to study: theory/current events/counterplans/yaddayadda and you can choose some of the classes so it provides for flexibility. And the instructors are mostly Claremont College students (emily sheldon from UOP…?) AND John Meany is heading the camp so you’re in good hands
Thanks for all the comments/advice! I plan on going with my future debate partner(who is new to speech and debate, but so far quickly learning) so hopefully that will help us strengthen our team dynamic=)
If you have any kind of parli experience a tech centric camp like ODI or even a LD camp like VBI or SNFI LD would be superior to Claremont (Speaking as someone who has attended both VBI and Claremont camps who knows a lot about Stanford from my partner)
@Artem, btw, the team that Lynbrook MB lost to round 1 of Parli SQuals was my team (the packet was just recently posted). I looked in my ballots, turns out I only have 2 of 3 ballots, so I don’t have the ballot where sides were confused :/. I have split ballots-one a clear Opp win, one a clear Prop win.
Would be cool if I weren’t missing so many ballots and I could check this…I’m missing at least 4 ballots, 2 of which contain decisions. There has to be a way we can get a scanner at tournaments so ballots can be posted online-portable scanners are really cheap. I’m definitely presenting this at the coach’s meeting in May.
Also, on the topic of preparation, I conduct 2-4 practice rounds per week, and generally assign topics for research weekly to maintain DX/IX style bins with articles and briefs. I also have one lecture a week/every other week on either strategy, theory, or important concepts (like, banking/real estate law, tax code, budget, court systems, function/history/structure of UN etc etc) that are commonly misunderstood.
To that end, if anyone in the bay area ever wants to scrimmage, Notre Dame would be happy to host some scrimmage rounds. I do very detailed judging critiques after all rounds, usually line by line even. Just an adult/critic to assist would be awesome. I’ll put something up on the CFL Buzz section if anyone is interested, especially small parli squads without many other people to debate.
No offense to those who did well at SCU2, but I noticed that the usual top ranked teams that went to MLK&STANFORD did not go to SCU2. How can the same points be given to people competing in a smaller and less tough field than major invitationals like UOP or MLK?
MLK and Stanford had more good teams because they had more teams period. Adjusted for tournament size, SCU2 field doesn’t look much weaker to me than Stanford’s field. I may be wrong, but I’d need to see some quantitative analysis to persuade me otherwise.
Apparently, Lynbrook MB, who were 11th seed, lost one of their ballots due to the judge confusing sides – they should have been 4-1,12-3 not 3-2,11-4.
Together with the above comment, this means that 10th seed (Lynbrook KU) plus whoever was 9th seed shouldn’t have cleared.
It’ll be a headache to figure out how to assign POI points for this.
P.S. @ above poster – we have matching avatars! woot
Do you know who they were paired with in Rd 1? I don’t have the packet (it hasn’t been posted yet), but it may or may not have had an effect on seedings.
Also, presumably if they had not been credited with a loss rd 1, they would have faced a ‘tougher’ team round 3 when we were lag pairing…so that’s the complication with the error.
Was it very clear that they won on the ballot or was it a judge confusing sides issues? It’s not impossible for tab to make mistakes, but all ballots were double checked by people who were not entering them in the computer, so usually if it is missed twice it is because either the judge put the wrong code in as the winner or confused sides and we didn’t catch it.
Based on my discussions with them, I can pretty safely say that Rylan and Akshay will pick Congress over Parli. If they did so, who would be the alternates?
The next highest seeded team that didn’t qual. It goes on pre-go round seeds because we didn’t input speaks for the go round.
Does anyone know who this next highest-seeded team would be? There is a VERY realistic possibility that they will be going to state.
Rumor has it that top alternate was Samuel Lin from Leland
Hey Artem,
Any chance organizing a “Fantasy Debate League” would be possible? I think it would be pretty fun, and I’d be happy to help out.
I’m utterly ignorant about everything relating to professional sports, so I have no idea how that’d work.
But if someone wants to organize this, I can let them use POI as a platform.
Great!
Will any Parli debaters be playing the PubFo game down at Berkeley?
I’m currently the Parli coach at Mountain View HS and Assistant Coach of Congress/Parli at Dougherty Valley HS, and one thing I’ve been pondering is the dearth of circuit style tourneys. Aside from the Cali Cup, which is btw an excellent tourney, there seems to be a real void. Would there be any interest in hosting a sort of Cali Cup 2? I have access to a deep pool of qualified judges, as well as relationships with institutions that would be willing to host, but I want to see if there’s any interest first. Thanks!
@ Ben: http://commweb.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/webhs/ViewEntries.aspx?ID=3
Some people I recognize are Claremont MW, Logan MS, and Lynbrook MB. Also, I’ll be there judging LD.
@Armand: I don’t think the community wants to adopt a highly technical style. When I put together CalCup, I made sure there was a balance of progressive and traditional judges in the pool, as long as both had former debate experience. We’ve seen the high school LD community split between circuit and local, and we’ve seen college policy virtually die out due to being overly technical, so let’s be careful to avoid that in high school parli. On the other hand, there is widespread discontent about quality of judging in elims (just read the Stanford thread), especially among the top teams, so I think there’s probably some demand for a circuit style tournament, as long as it doesn’t swing too far into the NDT/CEDA direction.
I wouldn’t recommend replicating CalCup – with the new Bishop O’Dowd tournament, there are probably enough “elite” tournaments already. What we need is a circuit-style regular invite. Also, some better judging at SCU wouldn’t hurt (although SCU has been decent compared to the rest of invites).
P.S. I told Melan he can give you my email, just in case you lost the one I gave you at Copeland. That, or you can add me on FB.
A Cal cup 2 would be awesome, as the O’ Dowd tournament will be nothing like a traditional tournament at all. And what’s wrong with parli getting technical? It will never have the chance to get as technical as policy just by its nature, and it gives it more depth. New theory arguments to play with, kritiks, etc. Fun stuff.
@Artem: Obviously parli, especially HS parli, will never become super technical by it’s nature. The idea wouldn’t be to make this CEDA—just better than league tourneys. The fact that you get crappy judges even at Stanford is somewhat discomforting.
What exactly is the Bishop O’Dowd tourney like?
The conception would be to have an elite entry and an open entry. An open entry so anyone can go, and an elite one for prestige purposes—you’d have to qualify.
But hey, apparently we’re hybriding at Willamette, so we’ll talk soon!
“The conception would be to have an elite entry and an open entry. An open entry so anyone can go, and an elite one for prestige purposes—you’d have to qualify.”
The English-speaking part of my brain feels violated in so many ways after attempting to understand those two sentences.
That’s explained up in this thread more
re: technical and judging
Until the judging pool at tournaments becomes better, there is no chance for Parli to become more technical. Lay judges are not going to be able to understand theory unless it is extremely well articulated and even then it is difficult to pull off without hammering substantive points. The three Analy teams of 2k8 were able to pull off a good balance of introducing LD style theory and pre-round prep to win rounds, but this is a strategy that is being deviated away from by the community and inhibited by CHSSA. The moment you have a non-lay judging pool is the moment that you will have debaters who used to do policy or LD start introducing that into the event in order to win easy rounds because they will be able to easily pick up in front of judges against opponents that don’t know how to counter what would be considered very simple stock shells in LD or policy.
If I was the sole judge adjudicating a round, the two teams would want to take a very different strategy to win the round than they would want to take in front of a lay judge. Adaptability is always key in picking up ballots, the best debaters in any event are able to adapt to their judge. Unfortunately not all Parli debaters have the experience necessary to be able to adapt to non-lay judges in front of judges that would be considered to be good judges at a circuit LD tournament. In the 2k7-2k8 year, Analy teams picked up a number of out rounds very easily because we knew our judges to be former LD circuit debaters or college debaters and we knew we could go fast and dominate on substance and theory.
Unfortunately, it is a rare occasion that this opportunity presents itself. You all complain about the quality of judges in Parli, but the fact of the matter is that the event doesn’t deserve what you would consider a “quality judge.” Circuit LD and Policy would not exist without spreading, without complicated framework and theory debates, and without k’s, etc. Those events require judges that can keep up on those types of arguments (and I frequently find myself unable to do so, but the fact remains that I am preferable in the LD pool to a parent because I can flow speed and I can follow the analytics if explained). Tournaments like Stanford have two options:
1. Guarantee good judges to varsity policy and varsity LD so that they can keep their bids and keep their prestige so that they can continue to make money from their tournament.
2. Spread the good judges between every event, which would lead to a lot of bored judges sitting in a PuFo/Parli round and a lot of parents not knowing what is going on in LD/Policy.
The less technical events get the shaft.
The easiest way (and the only immediate way) to counter this is to bring better judges. At Stanford, LD and Policy debaters were required to bring qualified judges that were reviewed by the tournament to ensure quality. Even if judges are not reviewed by tournament directors, you can improve the quality of the judging pool by bringing your friends who graduated from your school and are still in the area to tournaments as your judge instead of your mom. Berkeley did not have as stringent of requirements on judges, and the effects of this are obvious already.
Side effect of improving the judging pool: the event will become more technical. It is a fact that when teams are debating in front of an experienced debater, they will take a different strategy and will strive for easier wins, which will involve being more technical.
These are just my opinions on the event, reject them if you want (but I expect to see a. standard b. violation c. impacts d. voters (that’s a joke, don’t run theory in a comment thread on POI)).
Sidenotes: I can’t wait until CHSSA does stuff like ban theory arguments in Parli or place constraints on WPM. Colored paper was more than bad enough.
Also: I look forward to seeing GGSA teams at State Quals in two weeks. Some notes on differences in how the tournament will be run over previous years (this is the latest I have heard, no guarantees it will be the same later). Rounds one and two will be random. Rounds three and four will be power protect (as in 2-0 hit 0-2, 1-1 hit 1-1, then 3-0 hit 0-3, 2-1 hit 1-2). Then everyone with two losses will be dropped after round four and we will continue as we did in previous years. The goal of this is to make it so that good teams don’t drop early, but I don’t think it solves.
I look forward to seeing everyone in the prep room, we’ll have some fun.
The CBSR just had its state qualifier yesterday. Once the full results are out, I’ll forward them to you Artem. In the mean time, four teams qualified for state.
1st place: Great Oak High School – Philip Jr. Tacason & Isaak Cuenco
2nd place: Claremont High School – Storm Dowd-Lukesh & Pranay Yeturu
3rd place: Claremont High School – Daniel Musa & Patrick Wilkie
4th place: Redlands High School – James Pesavento & Gia Karpouzis
TCFL’s State Qualifiers, as reported by Iain Lampert:
1. Cleveland CL (Will Craft & Justin Lee)
2. Campbell Hall CL (Willy Clements & Ben Lazebnick)
3. Sierra Canyon HS (Chris Hariz & Ameek Shokar)
4. El Camino Real RG (Tyler Rodriguez & Jeremy Gordon)
So does anyone know if Rylan and Akshay are going in Congress? I had heard that Rylan carded in LD…? What is he planning to do?
Well, he also qualed in Impromptu, so who knows.
If he goes in Congress he’ll vacate both his Parli spot and an impromptu spot.
I’m curious…as a parli coach, how do I prepare my teams for topics at tourneys? It seems that the selection of issues barely references current events at all. For a tourney not to even MENTION libya or the middle east in a time like this, and instead do random non resolutions like deporting illegal immigrant criminals (not only is that huge side skew for the aff, is it not actually supposed to be status quo?)? Part of this is griping, yeah, but part is genuinely attempting to understand the logic behind topic decisions, so I can focus my lectures and research better.
i think thats a question that most debaters would love to know the answer to.
Prep is key to success. We used to maintain a 100+ page document of briefs, stock cases, and shells that we could use for just about any topic. Having a wide breadth of prep helps significantly, but that doesn’t necessarily solve for bad topics. You just have to hope that the opposing team is just as unprepared as you are when a bad topic comes down the pipe.
CVFL Resolutions:
1) THW exterminate capital punishment.
2) THBT censorship is never justified.
I was looking at the Parli section of the Joy page for the state tournament, and there is contradicting information on it.
It says both:
“Debaters MAY consult with any other competitors during prep time.”
and
“If it breaths and it is not your debate partner you can’t talk to it. ”
Does anyone know which one it is?
100% sure that there is no discussion allowed outside of your partner
I second Sam.
I noticed that months ago and emailed Nermin Kamel about it, and she knows about it–and said that she would change it months ago. So send her an email about the error (CaHSSA@yahoo.com).
I’m thinking of going to the CCPDI this summer:
http://highschooldebate.org/summer-workshops/
Has anyone else been there/any comments on the quality of the camp, or anything to expect/look out for?
I went last year and am planning on going this year. It’s great. Very fun and they have different aspects of debate to study: theory/current events/counterplans/yaddayadda and you can choose some of the classes so it provides for flexibility. And the instructors are mostly Claremont College students (emily sheldon from UOP…?) AND John Meany is heading the camp so you’re in good hands
If you plan to go to a parli camp, I’d recommend the Oregon Debate Institute – http://oregondebateinstitute.wordpress.com/. They let us post a couple of their lectures back in 2009, so you can get the idea. http://www.pointofinformation.org/resources/odi-lectures/
Their instructors are all top NPDA-parli debaters/coaches.
For CCPDI, also talk to Sam Gardner.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about CCPDI from my partner, Tula, as well as other members of my team, and intend to go this year.
I can’t find UOP 2010-2011 on JOT or POI results. Does anyone know where the results are?
http://www.pointofinformation.org/news/uop-invitational-2010/
Thanks for all the comments/advice! I plan on going with my future debate partner(who is new to speech and debate, but so far quickly learning) so hopefully that will help us strengthen our team dynamic=)
If you have any kind of parli experience a tech centric camp like ODI or even a LD camp like VBI or SNFI LD would be superior to Claremont (Speaking as someone who has attended both VBI and Claremont camps who knows a lot about Stanford from my partner)
Does anybody have any information of the Santa Clara Tournament? i couldnt find it on JoT
http://commweb.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/webhs/Calendar.aspx?CalType=AllHS
“Santa Clara Spring Invitational” toward the bottom
@Artem, btw, the team that Lynbrook MB lost to round 1 of Parli SQuals was my team (the packet was just recently posted). I looked in my ballots, turns out I only have 2 of 3 ballots, so I don’t have the ballot where sides were confused :/. I have split ballots-one a clear Opp win, one a clear Prop win.
Would be cool if I weren’t missing so many ballots and I could check this…I’m missing at least 4 ballots, 2 of which contain decisions. There has to be a way we can get a scanner at tournaments so ballots can be posted online-portable scanners are really cheap. I’m definitely presenting this at the coach’s meeting in May.
Also, on the topic of preparation, I conduct 2-4 practice rounds per week, and generally assign topics for research weekly to maintain DX/IX style bins with articles and briefs. I also have one lecture a week/every other week on either strategy, theory, or important concepts (like, banking/real estate law, tax code, budget, court systems, function/history/structure of UN etc etc) that are commonly misunderstood.
To that end, if anyone in the bay area ever wants to scrimmage, Notre Dame would be happy to host some scrimmage rounds. I do very detailed judging critiques after all rounds, usually line by line even. Just an adult/critic to assist would be awesome. I’ll put something up on the CFL Buzz section if anyone is interested, especially small parli squads without many other people to debate.
Sarah,
I coach Dougherty Valley and MVLA for parli, and would love to do some scrimmage rounds.
Email me at adomalewski@scu.edu if you’re interested!
No offense to those who did well at SCU2, but I noticed that the usual top ranked teams that went to MLK&STANFORD did not go to SCU2. How can the same points be given to people competing in a smaller and less tough field than major invitationals like UOP or MLK?
MLK and Stanford had more good teams because they had more teams period. Adjusted for tournament size, SCU2 field doesn’t look much weaker to me than Stanford’s field. I may be wrong, but I’d need to see some quantitative analysis to persuade me otherwise.
@Artem when will you update rankings with squals and SCU2?
when I have time. next weekend hopefully
Also, before you criticize compare the final four at Stanford to the final four at SCU2.
When will the rankings for the year be finalized?
Does anyone know how the BOD Invite went down (if at all)?