This past weekend I went to my first tournament outside of the Bay Area. The University of the Pacific (UOP) tourney was an interesting experience, showing a few differences from parliamentary debate in the Coast Forensic League.
First off, the tourney had a strictly-enforced 10-minute forfeit rule, causing 7 teams to be disqualified in their first round. This meant that 14 teams had zero speaks for at least one round, which I believe skewed results.
Secondly, the quality of the other teams seems to be held to a lower standard. In our second round, Betty and I hit a team which provided no relevant on-case arguments and spent the entire debate flaming us. They claimed that we were “lying” and “[didn't] deserve to be in parli”. Of course, we took offense, and gave around 10 joint points of order and clarification.
The judging at the tourney was really iffy for most rounds. Other than 2-3 flow judges, most judges were UOP students asked to judge a round. This meant that we only had legitimate judging for one round, and the rest were as lay as lay can be.
Overall, I thought that UOP was a pretty good tourney, and that it was a lot of fun. I do wish we could have gotten better than a 3-2 record, though… maybe next time.
good job!
Tourney was awesome. Well… everything except the tourney itself.
Actually most UOP students did a pretty fair job in judging/flowing I think. They left some pretty detailed comments.
I thought the quality of the pool was pretty good, and the tournament itself was run really well. Fun weekend
pretty good tourney – i liked it other than our terrible results.
that were partially your fault.
LOL i think you guys debated pretty well… though the
resolutions were too policy-esque for my taste. i like
broader resolutions like last year.