The annual Wylie tournament started, like all debate tournaments, early in the morning. I had to get up at 5 already and be there at 6. I was still extremely tired, because the evening before, I had gone to my boyfriend‘s house to meet his grandparents that were visiting from Georgia. Looking back, I probably should have stayed at home, preparing for the next day. This tournament took place at my school, meaning we all had to work at the tournament instead of competing. My partner Sumehra and I were still signed up to compete because H (our coach) said that it would be good training. So I was competing and helping with the tournament at the same time.
When I put my stuff in the choir room, there were already a lot of debate kids there to help set up the whole cafeteria. We had to put all of the tables and chairs in the cafeteria, prepare the librarie for the judges and open all of the rooms that we would be using for the tournament. We needed about an hour to complete all of that. We had a lot of moms volunteer for preparing the food. We were expecting 900 students this year, which is three times as much as last year. Everybody said that the reason why Wylie tournaments are so successful was because we had good food, so apparently the moms had been doing a really good job the last few years.
At 7 am the first schools started to arrive. My job at the tournament was to be in the hallway and show the debaters how to get to their rooms. So I was sitting there until 8 am, which is the time my first round started. My partner and I were assigned neg, which we were really happy about. The two girls we debated were from a school that‘s further away and they were also doing it for the first time.
The first thing after a few minutes of socializing was to exchange our cases (the arguments etc that we use for the round). We had some problems with their flashdrive, so after a few minutes we decided to do an email chain instead. We already lost a lot of time because of that, so when the round started, I was even more nervous. In case somebody doesn‘t rembember, the topic was: The United States federal government should substantially reduce Direct Commercial Sales and/or Foreign Military Sales of arms from the United States.
That round went pretty well. The mistake of our opponents was that they blamed potential wars on Trump. They argued that Trump was trigger-happy and would not hesitate to start a war. What they didn‘t know, however, was that Sumehra and I had prepared a disad proving that Trump could easily loose the 2020 election. With this one disad we could practically prove that all of their arguments were invalid. So after the round, the judge declared us the winner and we were so happy about it! Winning the first round ever is definitely not something I thought about actually happening.
When we were done with our second round, the third round had already started 23 minutes ago. We entered the room when we were 2 minutes away from an automatic loss. In the second round we were affirmative. We presented our case about Taiwan, but after a few minutes we knew we would loose. One of the team members was not new to debate like everyone else. She had done it for several years and just did this event to show her partner, that was new, how to do it. Not only was she a varsity member, but also she spread, meaning she talked very fast. Spreading is so fast, that most people cannot understand a word. That‘s also how my partner and I felt. We really couldn‘t understand what she was saying and horribly lost this round.
Then we had a lunch break. I went back to my spot in the hallway and talked to some other debate kids, while giving some directions inbetween. Then we had our third round, which went almost the exact same way as the first. Our opponents were two boys, obviously freshmen, that also did their first tournament. We beat them without a problem, since they didn‘t even know what hegemony was and they also didn‘t really answer our questions during cross ex. It was clear that we won, but they were very polite and the atmosphere in the room was a lot better.
After the third round I was so relieved that we were done for the day, which I knew we were because at our own tournament we can‘t advance to the next round anyway. So I went back to the table in the hallway where I should be giving directions. My partner, again, didn‘t show up. I was glad that I still wasn‘t alone. Sam from my debate class was there also and we actually had a lot of fun. He‘s crazy! XD
A little bit later, Jacob actually showed up at the tournament, which he shouldn‘t, but as I was told, his grandparents wanted to see the tournament where their granddaughter Gretchen was participating. So Jacob said hi to me real quick.
At my table in the hallway, at that moment, were quite a lot of other debate kids gathered, talking about ….whatever. One of them was Micah, a junior and my debate captain. He is not only what in America we call a snowflake, he‘s also a socialist. So after Jacob left, Micah lectured me for about an hour how it‘s inexcusable to date a republican and how disguested he is when seeing Jacob and me together. Some of his homies actually agreed with him and added that republicans would be racist, intolerant homophobes that hate minorities. That made me so mad! As far as I can tell, are all the republican people I met here a lot nicer than lefties. For instance, all of my favorite teachers are republicans and I just love them for standing up for their country and not taking shit from anybody. Also, so far, republicans have turned out to acutally be MORE tolerant. Jacob had never said anything bad about people that have different political views, while it seems to be Micah‘s hobby to bash everyone that doesn‘t agree with him. I didn‘t say anything though, since I really didn‘t wanna get into an argument. I just played it down a little and thought Micah would forget about that and move on. But that day wasn‘t the only moment that he brought that topic up. Actually today in school, my cx partner (now ex-cx-partner) said „Your boyfriend is a homophobe, isn‘t he“. Again, that is not only completely wrong, but also so rude to say……. Seriously, I‘m telling you…… Republicans are nicer!
Anyway, after that we started cleaning up already. There were still rounds going on, but the rooms that weren‘t used could already be cleaned and locked. So we cleaned up and by the time we were done, it was already 11pm. After we left the school, we still went to Whataburger together for team dinner. Adriana (my host mom‘s ¨sister¨) picked me and her son Nathan up from school and drove us to Whataburger. On the way there, we talked about the tournament and I said that I was thinking about switching out of CX and do another type of debate instead. I told them that the biggest reason for that was Micah and to my surprise, Nathan said he completely understood my decision and the reason why he doesn‘t do CX is because of Micah. He added that if I did LD (Lincoln Douglas Debate), Micah would not be my captain anymore and certainly would not be my boss anymore either.
So the next Monday, I told the coach that I wanted to change to LD and not do CX anymore. I‘m so glad I made that decision, I have the best captain now: Deborah <3