While Daisy wins her double-octos matchup against some New York prep school, her octos matchup is released and her reaction to it is simply priceless to her:
"Detroit Catholic Central? Wait a minute, DCC does progressive LD?" Daisy asks, in a tone that leaves no doubt as to her surprise. "I always pictured this place as some school doing traditional LD"
"They always seemed to prioritize quiz bowl over debate. So why are they even attending inter-state tournaments carrying ToC bids?" Daisy's mother asks her.
"This year they're serious about LD, I'm playing against their best player. Not the same player I judged a practice LD round for last year, though"
Oh boy... that guy managed to win a ToC bid by winning Michigan, but Michigan is perhaps the worst inter-state LD tournament I can ever imagine. Even I could have finaled there, Daisy muses, upon looking at his tournament grid, while making one final remark:
"Here's my chance to prevent DCC from getting to the ToC! Down with the Shamrocks! Down with DCC!" an over-excited Daisy shouts, with their neighbors even hearing about that LD round.
Shortly after the game begins, the neighbors come over to Daisy's home and ask some explanations from her or her parents regarding how noisy a debate round can get. And especially what makes the Venomous Agendas rivals of DCC in a debating context. And, obviously, to ask Daisy to calm down.
"Welcome to the Lincoln-Douglas octofinals at Columbia Invitational. On the aff side, we have, from Detroit Catholic Central in Michigan, Isoroku Kamura..." the judge announces to the contestants, before announcing her.
Never would I have, in my life in high school, believed non-Filipino Asian families to send their children to a Catholic private school... Isoroku would stand out like a sore thumb at DCC, Daisy muses, falling from her seat shortly before the actual game begins due to the surprise she was under.
But as soon as she could get back up, Isoroku begins his speech in earnest, and, to an outsider, it feels like he doesn't make any sense because he is speaking at blistering speeds. However, both the judge and Daisy could sort out this otherwise unintelligible mess. What the? Who did Isoroku train with that made him play progressive LD like this? questions surface in Daisy's mind while this game against DCC bewilders her in more ways than one.
However, unlike Phoebe earlier today, Isoroku doesn't resort to impact escalation; he instead runs ageism and ableism kritiks against the topic. Which in themselves constitute breaches of topicality, but since the opponent committed the first breach, she would need to respond to these kritiks. Especially the ageism one, which seems, to her eyes, to flow into the speed kritik she plans on running later. There is no point to argue against the merits of retirement reforms if they plan on arguing about rejecting retirement reforms promote ageism and ableism! Hehe: DCC won't suspect anything until my opening statement comes! Daisy muses, while her cross-examination period begins.
"You claim that rejecting retirement reforms promotes ableism by pushing differently abled people towards early retirement, but, using your values and criteria, your supporting evidence seem to adversely affect your VCs..." Daisy then goes on to point at some aspect of the evidence presented that seem to run counter to Isoroku's value criteria.
The 3 minutes allotted to Daisy to cross-examine Isoroku's arguments gives her a better idea of how to fit spreading into the ableism charges of her opponent. Now she needs to do her framework (values and VCs), then respond to the ageism and ableism arguments he ran, to their core, and only then can she think of running the speed K. About how high speaking speed reduces intelligibility and how intelligible content is key to critical thinking as well as making sure there is an actual exchange of ideas. The judge seems to tolerate kritiks and their associated breaches of topicality, Daisy thinks of whether she would be penalized for running the speed K. Then comes Daisy's turn to get cross-examined:
Stolen novel; please report.
"You're claiming that spreading promotes ableism, much like rejecting retirement reforms would" Isoroku aggressively tells Daisy.
"I never claimed that rejecting retirement reforms promoted ableism. I said there were different ways to help differently abled people that might be more ethical than sweeping retirement reforms. However, I did argue that spreading promoted ableism against specific disabilities, since speaking at very high speeds tended to make people with hearing and language disabilities uncomfortable and stay out of this activity they might have otherwise benefited from. And certainly some people for whom retirement reforms are a concern" Daisy explains herself.
It's now that I realize Daisy, while she made it sound natural because she ran the ableism aspect of the speed kritik immediately after addressing the ableism claims of rejecting retirement reforms, she suffers from the same lack of argumentative consistency as some of my previous opponents, in that she runs arguments from two completely different angles: on the one hand she argues about the ethics of rejecting retirement reforms, on the other she argues that spreading is inappropriate to argue the ethics of retirement reforms, and she somehow fits both into her own VCs, Isoroku muses while listening to Daisy's answers during cross-examination.
Yet, Isoroku's approach to the game makes his own 4-minute rebuttal speech sound like a laundry list containing mostly rebuttals of what Daisy said about the ethics of retirement reforms. In doing so, he leaves the speed K mostly unaddressed except for one line about how more argumentative depth will sharpen one's critical thinking, and how spreading makes that possible. Thus he is making no real attempt to argue that it's appropriate to argue a LD round at blindingly high speaking speeds, as he is doing.
However, for the following 6 minutes, realizing the speed K wasn't something Isoroku was willing to address, Daisy mostly leaves it out of her closing statement, and briefly focuses on the intelligibility aspect of it.
In the end, it seems to boil down to which flaw in one's argumentation will cost which debater the most. To both players, it appears to be one of the harder rounds, but also not perfect in any way.
"It's not the best round in the world, but Daisy addressed a practical aspect of engaging in a dialogue about retirement reforms with the people who will be affected" the judge then tells the two, along with what each one could do better, before the camera feed cuts off and the ballot comes through.
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And the result arrives on Tabroom later in the night, knowing that the winner will get to keep playing Sunday morning and the loser's tournament ends. Isoroku's parents are also watching the result of this game, er, round, next to their son at their home in Novi. When the whole family realizes that he lost a ToC bid to a girl attending a public high school in rural southwest Louisiana...
"Isoroku, you're grounded until you earn the second ToC bid, or the start of NSDA Nats, whichever happens first!" Isoroku's mother screams at her son.
"You brought shame upon Detroit Catholic's debate team! As Detroit Catholic's debate team captain, you were supposed to deliver exemplary performances, round in, round out!" Isoroku's father shouts at his son. "This is NOT how a state champion should play!"
"Who did I shame anyway? The student body only knew about the debate team for about half a year. They follow hockey, basketball with much more interest than us; I could win a state championship as I did last week, I could win a major debate tournament, and all I would get is an announcement on Monday morning! And mixed in with quiz bowl announcements if applicable"
"I always hear your public forum teammates talk about the... Venomous Agendas; you just lost to them!" Isoroku's mother tells him. "They were the only Louisiana school attending this tournament!"
"There were ninety-four LD players, from sixteen states. And multiple state champions, such as New York, New Jersey, and, of course, Michigan" Isoroku retorts to his parents.
"I hate the Venomous Agendas! They stole a ToC bid from you!" Isoroku's father scolds him.
"I must try to convince the coach to let us attend Stanford next month..." Isoroku sighs.
This season, however, both Michigan LD state championships (NCFL and NSDA since MIFA, or Michigan Interscholastic Forensics Association, does not run a Lincoln-Douglas state championship) are already over. Since DCC didn't have as much of a debate budget as, say, Notre Dame or St. Mary Prep, the other two major LD powers in Michigan, or what passes for LD powerhouses anyhow, DCC focused on NSDA since they attended it last year.
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Meanwhile, at Daisy's home, the VAs' ToC bid in LD is a balm on her debating ailments. And against DCC, and in what DCC does best on the debate floor, no less!
"Finally, we won against DCC! And I got a ToC bid to boot!" an overjoyed Daisy shouts, and then does her homework she didn't have much of a chance to do because of this debate tournament.
Then comes the following day, where Daisy loses in quarterfinals against another team that, rather than debating the morality and ethics of retirement reforms, would argue for a plan of retirement reform. Which forces her to reframe the opening statement from a policy angle.