Late September 2024. With the renewed roster of the debate team, and only two veterans who play in events the new players don't play in (dramatic interpretation and original oratory, which the players call DI and orat respectively), the Venomous Agendas play at the Holy Cross Navy and Old Gold.
On Monday morning, or October 1, the VA debaters return home to an announcement that's a little muted. Glen briefly reviews the VAs results at that debate tournament. I get that everyone has to start somewhere, but somehow, it's not Chantal who seems to perform best at this tournament. I didn't see Sadie coming; until today, I pictured Sadie simply as someone who might be smart, but doesn't otherwise make any kind of splash whatsoever, he muses while he begins the announcement, while also reviewing the debate team's expense report from attending Holy Cross.
"Good morning, everyone, our debate team has returned from its season opener, the Holy Cross Navy and Old Gold Debate and Speech Exhibition with a top novice speaker award won by Sadie Naath, a sophomore! Honorable mention to Chantal Morin, with a fourth place in extemporaneous speaking in her first debate tournament! For more questions about the events, please ask the debate team coach!" Glen makes his announcement, before moving on to the announcement regarding the mathletic season opener.
In most classes without a debate player, including Jennifer's AP Calculus BC section, most students gasp upon hearing about the very existence of the debate team; non-freshmen never, never heard anything about the debate team last year unless they were friends of the players. Not even making it to the semifinals in public forum in the NSDA district qualifier or the state championship was somehow enough to warrant an announcement last year.
"Oh my god, we have a debate team?" Jennifer gasps upon hearing the news.
"What the hell are public forum and extemporaneous speaking?" Phil, another mathlete at the VMC, asks, while rolling his eyes.
"I have no clue either, but you'd better get used to it especially since there will be more debate tournaments" Trent answers the students' questions.
But then Glen is reminded of the time and place of the mathletic season opener, the first game of the official regular Math Madness season. Yet, opponents aren't always known in advance in that league.
"Don't forget to buy your tickets for the opening game of the Venomous Agendas' mathletic season on Thursday night at seven PM for four dollars each!" Glen finishes his announcement.
Meanwhile, since the coach assumes all in-person tournaments would cost more or less the same as this one to attend, he summons the coach to his office during lunch, and ask for explanations about the debate schedule.
"Can you explain to me the following? You're risking going seriously over budget if all tournaments end up being this expensive!" a furious Glen screams at the debate coach.
"Our remaining schedule for the season includes the following: Teurlings Catholic, Southside, Isidore Newman if they let us in, St. Thomas More, and Delores Arthur, and that's not counting on the state championships" the debate coach lists all the tournaments the debate team plans on attending.
"That's a lot of tournaments, and, if possible, swap out an in-person tournament for an online one. Do you have an idea of how much you would save by going online?" Glen asks the debate coach, not knowing whether there would be expenses incurred by going online that aren't when attending in-person tournaments. "For future years, no more than twelve players!" the principal warns the debate coach.
"I don't think we're going to get more than that realistically. The debate team has the same reputation of intense intellectual requirements as the other two teams, nearly all players we get are in the top quarter of their respective classes, and the majority are in the top ten percent" the debate coach shares his observations as to how big the debate team can realistically get.
$7,000 to run a debate team playing 8 in-person tournaments per year? And that's with a bus driver working as a judge at each of these tournaments, and with the bus expenses not charged against the debate team's budget? Last year, the coach simply chauffeured the team with his own car on his own dime. I can feel like the debate team is going to cost us going forward! And, it might sound a bit bizarre, but I would need to pray that mathletics makes it past the first playoff round at the Math Madness, Glen reflects on the financial implications of getting all these new players.
Of why there are only two operational debate teams in southwest Louisiana, namely themselves and the neighboring parish. Travel costs are very high for teams in this region. But it is too soon to tell whether that inter-parish rivalry would remain one-sided on the debate floor the way it has been last year.
We have only one player outside the top academic quartile, and he's our orat player. The DI player is just a little above the top-25% mark, unofficially of course, and, if all freshmen can maintain the same range of grades as they used to in middle school, they will all be able to get to the top-10%, the debate coach gets flashbacks, triggered by his closeness to his players' academic records. To which all coaches have access in order to enforce the no pass, no play policy in effect in the parish, but never has no pass, no play been an issue for any of the academic teams.
------------------------
Back at home, for dinner, Valerie returns home from a math team practice and has a discussion about this year's math team going into the Math Madness.
"So obviously Imélie, Jennifer and Vontae are going to be our best players going into the Math Madness, but then comes Cristiano, a sophomore, and Phil, another player at the VMC, then me. Here's to hoping that I can go up the team's depth chart" Valerie makes her wish for the Math Madness.
"Do you know against whom we will play on Thursday?" Selena asks her daughter.
"Yes. Harvard-Westlake"
Oh boy... our scheduling will make it so that we will mostly play against teams on the West Coast for the regular season, Valerie starts thinking because of the elephant in the Venomous Agendas' mathletic room: livecasting of their games. Here they can solve problems in any order, but traditionally the VAs attempted to solve them in the order they were presented.
Will we play to the same crowd, come playoff time, as we did last year? Not even Imélie or Jennifer have the same charisma as Gen did, Glen muses, realizing that mathletics' gate receipts weigh much more heavily on the entire school's extracurricular budget than it used to.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
"I'm surprised Sadie was able to amount to something on the debate floor at her first tournament; she stole Chantal's thunder" Valerie continues by commenting on the morning announcement.
"Who the hell is Sadie anyway?" Selena asks, rolling her eyes. "You never mentioned her in any shape or form, yet you were always eager to talk about VAs' academic extracurriculars"
"She's a rookie on the debate team, same as Chantal. She might suffer from the same lack of experience as most of the other players, but it's clear she has potential, too" Glen explains to his wife while Valerie returns to her room to do her homework. "So at least I guess we can diversify our bets as to who will carry the hopes of the VA fans who prefer humanities and social studies over mathletics"
To the eyes of the public, Imélie is very much a mathlete, even though, at the HSNCT, she clearly showed promise as a quiz bowler. Even so Imélie is not the person who can mend the rifts between both factions, no more than Marcia was able to. They're both so similar as students, Glen reflects on how to manage the town's tensions.
But then Valerie rehearses on the family flute, bought for Dexter, for the next football game. She also is on the band, knowing that focusing solely on mathletics is not a good idea for college, or at least not when you aim higher than LSU.
------------------------
Then comes the first math game on Thursday night, the season opener which Glen attends and not simply because his daughter is starting the game. He is also the maître de cérémonie of the game, too.
"Welcome to the 2024-2025 Venomous Agendas' mathletics season opener. Tonight's game will be played against, from California, the Harvard-Westlake Wolverines! Good luck to both teams and let the game begin!" Glen announces at the auditorium, while the players are, unlike last year, seated in an arc on stage.
The game begins and man this game is stiff. All players on the team feel the pressure, and not just the star players poised to score the big points. But, since it's the regular season, the questions don't exceed the difficulty of the AMC12 or maybe early AIME.
Whereas so many expected one of Imélie, Jennifer or Vontae to score the VAs' first point, somehow, Valerie ends up scoring the first point. The crowd then gasps when they see someone who was hitherto little-known to them (since middle school mathletics just wasn't followed with the same fervor by the population as was high school mathletics) being faster than more established mathletes. Then again, as a mathlete, until now, Imélie was mostly known for her prowess in calculus.
As the game goes on, the crowd's powerlessness over the problems becomes apparent even as the three girls on the VAs' math team are taking as many bursts of speed as their minds allowed for it. Yet some of their opponents also play the speed game, with the result that the scoreboard moves quickly and, for the Wolverines, who makes up the scoring, since the team score is based on the top-5. On the other hand, the Venomous Agendas don't have the same depth. As a result, their top-5 is mostly the same for the entire game: Cristiano, Imélie, Jennifer, Valerie and Vontae in alphabetical order.
So fast are the VAs' 3 girls that, by the halfway mark (15 minutes), the VAs already scored 35 points, of which 23 are scored by these 3 girls. At that point, Valerie appears to have slowed down, and she has one question left to go. And the male players are apparently slower, too.
Looks like my burst of speed on the first question made me waste precious energy... and exhausted our opponents, too. They can still rally, but it's now up to me and my male teammates to hold the line! Valerie muses while she reads what she deems the final question. The Wolverines are trailing by 5 points, and they have more questions remaining.
By the end of the game, however, it seemed the Wolverines' late-game rally proves insufficient for them to win over the Venomous Agendas.
"And that's the game. The Venomous Agendas wins, but caution must be exercised so that the town doesn't anoint the second coming of past stars too quickly" Glen then warns the people in the audience while they leave the auditorium, happy that their local favorites win even with mostly new faces.
------------------------
Upon returning home, before Valerie could continue doing homework as well as rehearsing for the next day's football game, Glen debriefs his daughter about the math game.
"You took a lot of people by surprise. Few people could have expected you to play on the level of juniors or seniors tonight, you played one of the best games I could ever hope for under these circumstances. However, going forward, the questions will get harder, the opponents will get stronger, and while you are in a pretty good position for the AMC-twelve, what worries me, in the short run, is the AIME. It's too premature to worry about the USAMO if there's no reasonable assurance you'll qualify" Glen harangues his daughter after the game.
"Yet you said it so yourself that the USAMO is a prerequisite for the EGMO and the IMO! Sometimes, dad, you lack a clear idea of what it takes to achieve the goal!" Valerie laments to her father, about to cry because of the stresses of mathletics.
"Very few contestants at the USAMO are freshmen, and almost no one qualifies for the EGMO or the IMO as a freshman"
"Dad, at what level did you engage in mathletics? The way you talk about mathletics to me seems to be implying that you were a mathlete yourself"
"That makes me uncomfortable to talk about my own past in high school. Now, go do your homework!" her father turns red and yells at her.
The Venomous Agendas are probably the most feminine mathletics team in the country that has any actual shot at getting anyone to qualify at the USAMO. In the sense that their top performers seem to be female-heavy; even though, for Imélie, the USAMO would be a dead-end competition, what I saw of Imélie tonight reminds me very much of Marcia's playstyle, and she seems poised to perform even better than Marcia. Currently Valerie is about as good as the best male players, but this season's stars are obviously Imélie and Jennifer, Glen keeps his observations about what he believes makes VA mathletics different from everyone else capable of competing at the USAMO.
------------------------
Turns out that Thursday's mathletic win made the town less bitter after a disastrous defeat on the gridiron against Iowa High (in Calcasieu Parish due west of them) on Friday night, but he leaves that out of the Monday morning announcement, where quiz bowl instead takes center stage.
"Last Saturday, our two quiz bowl teams finished fourth and sixth respectively at the Tal Atkins Memorial Tournament in Shreveport, but our top scorer played on the B-team, Sadie Naath! Consequently, she will play on the A-Team in future tournaments!" Glen announces over the PA system.
I can tell that my own friends and their parents will have to wait for a bit until they can finally get their place under the spotlight, and even then, only for about two or three days at a time, especially since they compete directly with both mathletics and football, Anna, the arts and literature player on the quiz bowl B-team, muses while in her social studies classroom. Better two or three days under the town's spotlight than nothing, I guess... And scarcely 2 weeks ago, Sadie was just a smart girl but "like the others" in a lot of respects. She'll definitely be our friends' mascot going forward.
Yet even with the increase in space given to quiz bowl as well as to speech and debate (often called simply debate by the VA community, presumably because Florence's pair used to overshadow the speech players, DI, orat or extemp) in announcements as well as on school media, social or not, the debate team seems not to have any social capital in town, at least for now. Quiz bowl therefore carries the humanities and social studies faction's hopes.
------------------------
One week later, after another tightly won mathletic victory against a major Western powerhouse, Harker, good news come from another source. The debate team will finally have something to show to what few supporters it might currently have.
"At the Teurlings Catholic Rebel Classic, the Venomous Agendas team won big. First with Daisy Pammant, a freshman, winning the novice Lincoln-Douglas tournament! Next, we have Rebecca Tarib and Jarod Wilson, winning the novice policy tournament! We also have Chantal, placing second in extemp, and last but not least, Sadie Naath and Joe Glumack-Layton winning public forum and with Sadie as top speaker!"
Before the school year began, I was poised to be the one carrying the hopes of the debate team. Then Sadie came out of nowhere and suddenly captured the administration's hearts! Chantal laments quietly, before asking for the hall pass to go to the bathroom and cry.