Texas Shoot Out Round Robin Results

Congratulations to Chris Leonardi and Hank Stolte, the hybrid team taking first place at the 2010 Texas Shoot Out Round Robin. Thanks to all of the participants for some great debates.

1st place - Chris Leonardi and Hank Stolte - Hybrid
2nd place - Faraz Hemani and Saad Khalid - Dulles High School
3rd place - Vivek Dathla and Nikhil Bontha - The Kinkaid School

2010 Texas Shoot out - Round Robin pairings and judge assignments

Hello everyone,

Below are the pairings for the 2010 Texas Shoot Out. Note - all rounds will be in the CMA. You can park in any of the legal spots close to the CMA on Sunday. On Monday, you will want to park in the parking garage on University and 27th street. Breakfast will be served at 9:30 AM in CMA 3.130 - - call me with any questions at 646-286-3734.

SUNDAY

Round 1 10AM



Westwood v Dulles – Bhatacharjee, Fitz - CMA A3.108

Hendrickson v Churchill – Gonzalez, Rocha - CMA A3.112

Hybrid v Kinkaid – Crowe, Park - CMA A3.130

Mercedes v Little rock - Martin, Sanford - CMA A5.136



Round 2 1PM



Little Rock Central v Westwood –Gonzalez, Fairchild - CMA A3.108

Dulles v Hendrickson – Crowe, Miller - CMA A3.112

Churchill v Hybrid – Makuch, Albiniak - CMA A3.130

Kinkaid v Mercedes – Clark, Koneru - CMA A5.136



Round 3 3:30

Westwood v Kinkaid – Thomas, Evans - CMA A5.136

Hendrickson v little rock cental – Clark, Cauthen - CMA A3.108

Hybrid v dulles – Johnson, Fairchild - CMA A3.112

Mercedes v Churchill – Crowe, Bhattacharjee - CMA A3.130



Round 4 6PM

Churchill v westwood – Johnson, Evans - CMA A5.136

Kinkaid v Hendrickson – Makuch, Cauthen - CMA A3.108

Little rock central v hybrid – McNeil, Koneru - CMA A3.112

Dulles v Mercedes – Liu, Albiniak - CMA A3.130



MONDAY



Round 5 9:00 AM

Westwood v Hendrickson – JD Sanford, Mckinney - CMA A3.108

Hybrid v Mercedes – Gonzalez, Reed - CMA A3.112

Dulles v Churchill – Martin, Park - CMA A3.130

Kinkaid v Little Rock Central – Thomas ,Bhattacharjee, - CMA A5.136



Round 6 11:30

Hybrid v westwood – Bhattacharjee, Albiniak - CMA A3.108

Mercedes v Hendrickson – Murray, Johnson - CMA A3.112

Kinkaid v ‘dulles – McNeil, Evans - CMA A3.130

Little rock v churchhill – Miller, Donovan - CMA A5.136



Round 7 1:30

Westwood v Mercedes – McNeil, Makuch - CMA A3.112

Hendrickson v Hybrid – Martin, Donovan - CMA A3.108

Dulles v little rock – Rocha, Fitz - CMA A5.136

Churchill v kinkaid – Miller, Murray - CMA A3.130

2010 University of Texas Round Robin Participants

The University of Texas and the Texas Forensic Union will host the following Round Robin participants:

Westwood - Zofia Yellin and Jackie Chen - Judge: Chris Crowe, Jeremy Martin

Hendrickson - Hudson Davis and Maggie Solice - Judge: Risha Bhattacharjee

Hybrid - Chris Leonardi and Hank Stolte - Judge: Steven Murray

Mercedes - PJ Martinez and Leo Vela - Judge: Hector Rocha

Dulles - Faraz Hemani and Saad Khalid - Judge: Misael Gonzalez

Churchill - Adam Lipton and Max Birnbaum - Judge: JD Sanford

Kinkaid - Nikhil Bontha and Vivek Dathla - Judge: Claire McKinney

Some UTNIF announcements

For all you UTNIF alums out there, you may be wondering what has happened to the old names of the differing UTNIF program offerings (Marathon, Experienced, etc) in the 2011 program offerings. We decided to change the names for the sake of clarity. Too much ambiguity about skill level, curriculum emphasis, etc in the old naming convention made for confusion on the part of students, parents and coaches. The new naming convention, is just that, a new naming convention.

The curriculum for the two UTNIF mainstays (Marathon and Experienced) remains largely the same. What was formerly referred to as "The Marathon" (a reference, I believe, to the late Scott Deatherage's oft heard reminder that debate tournaments are a marathon, not a sprint, and also to the high number of practice debates guaranteed by the curriculum) now goes by the name "The Skills Intensive." What was formerly called "the Experienced Seminar" is now known as "The Topic Research Intensive."

Students in the Topic Research Intensive are typically more experienced than the majority of those students choosing to participate in the Skills Intensive, but the major difference between the two programs is the emphasis on topic research and argument construction strategy in the Topic Research Intensive. The Skills Intensive is appropriate for students across the board - even the most experienced debater will benefit from the tremendous practice experience. The Topic Research Intensive is appropriate for debaters who understand that to succeed at the highest levels of debate competition you've got to understand the topic better than your opponent. Writing and researching your own arguments is essential. The Topic Research Intensive will teach students how to do it.

We have had in past summers a growing number of students who choose to spend the ENTIRE SUMMER in Texas at the UTNIF. Some will choose to attend the Skills Intensive in one session and the Topic Research Intensive in the other. Other students have attended two sessions of the Topic Research Intensive. Still others have chosen to enroll in the 6 week Summer Survivors program. Whatever the division, contact us if you have questions about curriculum or need guidance in choosing what is right for you.

New UTNIF Program Offering

The Sophomore Select. June 24-July 14.

We are very excited to offer a new program in 2011 for rising sophomores!

Any debater entering their second year in the activity is at a crucial moment in their learning curve. Having conquered the basics, most students are hungry for success at the varsity level. It is essential for students at this stage to receive strong guidance that will help them develop good practice, speaking, and research habits. This program is designed with those needs especially in mind.

The Sophomore Select will be offered during Session 1 of the UTNIF only and will be led by Brian McBride of the University of Southern California and Nick Fiori of Damien. Students will work as a tight knit lab with McBride and Fiori to master foundational skills. Skill and tactical work will be the emphasis, but the lab also aims to ignite student interest in topic research and argument construction. Two of the best coaches from the high school and college debating world, McBride and Fiori will ensure students come away transformed into much, much, better debaters. Both instructors offer a strong background in policy and kritikal approaches to debating. Students will come out of this lab experience ahead of the pack because of the opportunity to work hard amongst their peers in an environment of constructive criticism that will encourage students' intellectual growth, while dispelling the myths that often hold young debaters back from success. Lectures by other UTNIF staff on select topics also will be offered.

The lab will have limited enrollment, acceptance by application only. Applications for this program are DUE by March 15, 2011. Applicants will receive notice of acceptance by April 1. Application to this program is free. More information on the program and the application process will be forthcoming on the UTNIF site - www.utdebatecamp.com

Making 2AR Choices

Making 2AR choices - Claire McKinney

Often in debates, the 2AR snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. What I mean is that sometimes a 2NR fails to do any of the following things:

1 ) Does not do impact calculus, picks the wrong impact to heavily favor, or fails to
even extend a terminal impact (this is common when they go for a counterplan with an internal net benefit, or when the terminal impacts to both the affirmative and the negative positions are very similar like hegemony and deterrence)
2 ) Does not kick out of a turned argument well or at all.
3 ) Fails to hedge their bets by making even-if statements or comparative risk analysis (similar to impact calculus, but may have more to do with comparing warrants on uniqueness, link, or internal link questions)

As a judge, one often expects the 2AR to easily exploit these mistakes and make use of that Aff Side Bias to easily dispense with a poorly executed 2NR. Yet more often than not, the affirmative replicates the mistakes of the 2NR. I think there are three main reasons the affirmative might do this.

1 ) The 2AR is seduced into thinking that where the negative went was the most
important part of the debate.
2 ) The 2AR feels pressure to refute everything the 2NR said.
3 ) The 2AR tries to extend everything the 1AR said.

These are not mutually exclusive and all point to the problem of not thinking about the big picture and making strategic choices. Here are a few tips of how to begin to think systematically about a winning 2AR and how to capitalize on 2NR mistakes.

--The 2AR overview. Write one. Many overview naysayers think they serve little purpose, but I believe that the 2AR overview is where you isolate what you need to win and why winning it means you win the debate forces you to do two thinks that are vital in prep time. The first is that you force yourself to make a strategic decision. Will you win on a dropped turn? On a solvency deficit to the counterplan? The permutation? Because you needs to isolate THE reason you win (not three reasons), you will have to analyze what arguments you have to answer to do so, what arguments are irrelevant, and how to persuade the judge that the negative was inadequate on those positions. Second, you are reminded of the importance of impact calculus. Do this impact calculus in the top of the 2AR and you won’ t forget to do it later on the flow.

-- Less is more. Sure, you need defense on the key negative arguments, but you shouldn’ t extend ALL your defense or EVERY solvency deficit to the counterplan. You should extend the solvency deficit that is most true or is the largest and thus gets you access to the largest impact. In a debate I recently saw, the 2AR extended two solvency deficits to a counterplan, one for each advantage. However, the counterplan obviously solved one advantage and the time it took to extend the second solvency deficit made it such that the 2AR didn’ t extend a terminal impact to either advantage. If the 2AR had focused on just one solvency deficit, then there would have been a complete argument as opposed to two distinct halves of two distinct arguments.

--Evidence comparison is your friend. Even if you are behind on an issue after the 1AR, if you do evidence comparison, you can make new arguments in the comparison of the
warrants of the evidence. For instance, even if the debate had hitherto been as shallow as heg solves war versus heg doesn’ t solve war up until the 2AR, you can use the evidence as a place to argue that the 2NRs evidence just says hegemony cannot stop a conflict from beginning, but your evidence indicates that hegemony can stop the escalation of war because political leaders will avoid entangling other powers through escalation for fear of losing to a preponderance of American power. IF your evidence actually supports your warrants (and that’ s a big IF), most judges will allow this type of evidence comparison because the extension of the evidence in the 1AR made this comparison predictable. It’ s better if the warrants come out earlier, but if they don’ t, you can argue the evidence extension gave the negative ample opportunity to do their own comparison. A corollary, of course, is that if you hide new arguments in warrant comparison and your evidence DOESN’ T make the claims you say, you are very likely to lose.

-- Making new arguments is often a no-lose prospect. While your first instincts should be depth is better than breadth and the 1AR ought to set up your 2AR strategy, sometimes, especially in impact calculus, new arguments will be accepted and even welcomed.

For instance, if the 2AR is the first time you make a timeframe outweighs magnitude argument, if it is the ONLY such comparison, the judge may very well allow it because there is nothing else to guide their decisionmaking. Even if the judge doesn’ t allow the new comparison, all it did was waste 5-10 seconds and the payoff is potentially much greater than the cost. Notice that this advice is conditioned on what else happened in the debate. Impact calculus that the neg starts early and goes unrefuted will make this strategy much less likely to payoff. Exploit the failures of the 2NR to give the judge something to hang onto.

In the end, remember that the greatest strategic asset of the 2AR is that you get to ignore a lot of what the 2NR says because if you make one argument very well, that often is much better than answering all their shallow arguments with an equal number of shallow arguments. Shallow versus shallow makes for unhappy judges and coin flip decisions.Shallow versus depth makes for happy judges and much more certainty in your wins.

Congratulations to UTNIF St. Mark's participants

Congratulations are in order to the College Prep team of Vinay Pai and Tatsuro Yamamura on being top seed and also on their SEMIFINALS appearance at the Heart of Texas invitational. Vinay is an '09 alum of the UTNIF and two of his coaches, Daniel Sharp and John Hines, are members of the UTNIF teaching staff.

Congratulations also to the Kinkaid team of Zach Rosenthal (UTNIF '09) and Vivek Dathla (Doubles), and also the Kinkaid team of Robert Baldwin and Nikheel Bontha (Quarters). Both teams are coached by UTNIF lab leader Claire McKinney, who also was recognized by the tournament for her stand out assistant coaching!