Point of Information

Ivy Ziedrich says:

Has anyone here had or know someone who has had experience with ODI? I’m interested to hear a recent account of how applicable the instruction is to California hs parli (especially since they mix advanced and college debaters) and how ODI compares overall to Stanford and Claremont (2 weeks at ODI vs 1 week at either of the others).
Feedback would be wonderful; thank you!

Thorpe says:

Hi Ivy, as for ODI, I believe you’d be in good hands based upon my team’s experience at the University of Oregon Invitational (which promotes ODI at every turn). I don’t know much about Claremont, so I can’t speak to that camp.

However, as for comparing ODI to SNFI, a big difference, from my own personal perspective, is that I’ll be running the SNFI camp so from my own self-serving interests, of course you should choose SNFI over ODI. While SNFI is very much NPDA influenced in its instruction, its primary focus, above and beyond anything else, is turning you into a dominant high school debater, because, when you get down to it, it’s all about winning rounds, breaking, and advancing. I know every camp will claim that this is their goal, but I think I have a pretty good track record of producing some pretty solid teams. You’ll learn a lot of theory, but you’ll also learn a lot of practical nuts and bolts that are key to winning high school rounds. I understand that having tremendous esoteric debate knowledge is empowering, but I also understand that 95% of your rounds will be in front of lay judges. The former does not always help you with the latter. You know from personal experience that you can go through an entire invitational, break, and not be assigned one judge who understands the word topicality.

Also, I’ll be putting together an amazing staff of instructors (some you actually might have competed against) who have a proven track record of success in high school parli. When they’re official, you’ll probably know who most of them are and understand you’re in the care of some of California’s former dominant high school debaters. They’ll teach you theory, but they also know what it takes to win. And again, to reiterate, the goal of the camp is to turn you into a competitive (or in your case even more competitive) debater now. So, you know that feeling, when you’ve hit a real good team in a round and you’d like to pick their brain? Well, you can do that for 1 to 2 weeks, because those debaters will be teaching you.

SNFI also attracts a good chunk of debaters from outside of California where parli rules are completely different. So, you can look at the SNFI camp as a parli cultural exchange. You’ll learn about different styles of parli and learn to adapt to different rules and formats. If you think about it, it’s what we already do in California as we move between GGSA tournaments to completely open prep invites such as Santa Clara and Cal Cup. Some think this lack of standardization in parli is a detriment, but the longer I’ve been involved the more I’ve come to believe that this lack of homogenization is what makes parli awesome and absolutely unique in forensics. However, I admit a definite predilection for current events and policy rounds, so you’ll be doing lots of those at SNFI.

Again, I’m sure ODI is an excellent experience (and there is a price difference), and be aware that I’m certainly advocating for my camp. However, my team (from California, trained by this summer’s SNFI guy) did win the Oregon tournament. Regardless of your decision, you’ll benefit.