Re: six/eight values

[croasmun@juno.com]

Everyone who has judged much novice/JV debate has heard teams throw in
the towel.  [Almost always the negative team in the round.  Hmm.] 
Earlier this year I got to hear it TWICE at the same tournament.  In
round 1, the 1NC said he had done several years of parlimentary so he
thought he was ready, but he couldn't understand much of 1AC given the
speed at which it was read.  In round 4 the 2NC walked back to me before
his speech and confided that they were from a class, their teacher told
them to go in and read a state counterplan ("it will apply to
anything"), and after 2AC he and his partner realized they couldn't
really fiat Department of Defense policy at the state government level. 
They knew nothing else they could do, and they wanted to avoid further
embarrassment.

In general the reasons for novi throwing rounds come down to some
combination of new experience, lack of practice/preparation, info
overload, broad topics, rapid delivery, having to debate experienced
competition, having to cope with (or present) arguments they realize are
absurd, doing a class requirement, doing a scholarship requirement, and
the total time spent (two travel days plus three days at the
tournament).  These stresses can manifest themselves in physical
exhaustion too, I suppose.  All can be dealt with, completely apart from
the issue of the total number of debates held within a given three day
span.  None, in my opinion, justify a school spending the same amount of
money (and students spending the same amount of their time and often some
of their own money) for 25% fewer prelim rounds.

At some point, not within this thread, there can be a further discussion
of what can be done about attrition (especially novice attrition).  For
my own part, I liked the old practice of tournaments having four-person
formats in novice divisions, at least first semester.  I liked the old
NDT experiment of having a narrower version of the national topic, for
use at "rookie" tournaments.

But if some debaters get physically worn out after five rounds of debate,
for no other reason than the physical demands of giving five
constructives and five rebuttals in a short period of time, maybe cardiovascular training would help them.  And even with 6 prelims instead of 8,
those novi mentioned below would still have a round #6.

>    I think this paragraph largely misses the point. The purpose of
>shortening a day is not just for the best it also helps the newest.

>   On a couple of occasions this year I have watched novices walk 
>around
>on the last day of a tournment in an utter daze. I have judged a 
>couple of
>teams that threw round 6 or 7 because they were totally wore out.

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