In the months to follow, the results follow one after the other, especially for quiz bowl and mathletics fans: first quiz bowl wins at Tal Atkins but it ultimately proved Cristiano's best tournament all season: he was demoted to the B-team after the VAs finish fourth at the LQBA Fall Invitational South.
Then came the fall Math Madness, which, by now became the subject of butt jokes about the VAs choking year in, year out, losing in the semifinal despite selling out the stadium for all 5 playoff games. As per usual, the VAs make it to the VMC final, even with Nicole who, like Faith, narrowly qualified for the AIME... and all 4 core veterans handily qualify for it.
Finally, debate: they win a string of local tournaments like Teurlings Catholic and JPG, and have strong performances in inter-state tournaments, such as Congress and intl extemp at Grapevine and extemp (which Chantal won), policy as well as public forum at Isidore Newman.
After Isidore Newman, however, the debate coach made Glen weigh the decision of whether to send Chantal to Lexington for the Tournament of Champions or to hold out for NSDA-State and hope Sadie's pair can also win because, unless the VAs go deep in the spring Math Madness, they can't afford to attend both the ToC and NSDA Nats.
Before classes begin, Glen quickly reviews the results from the Columbia Online Invitational, which is the last inter-state tournament the VAs would enter for the regular season.
On Monday, the morning announcement goes into greater detail about the fields than previous Monday morning announcements regarding debate tournaments.
"This weekend, our Venomous Agendas participated in the Columbia Invitational, with our Congressional players placing twentieth and twenty-fifth, out of a field of seventy-eight, extemp and original oratory being eliminated in the prelims..." the principal announces.
Several of Chantal's classmates gasp upon hearing about how Chantal could lose such a tournament when she accustomed them to strong performances for the first half of the season.
"Lincoln-Douglas finished three-three. And our two strongest-performing teams are policy, eighth out of a field of forty teams from eleven states, and public forum, twentieth out of a field of one hundred and fifty-eight teams among the best in the nation, from twenty-three states! More than ever, debate can dream, and dream big!" the principal finishes the announcement.
"Eighth for policy, twentieth for public forum, what's the meaning of this?" a dazed classmate of Chantal asks her.
"It's probably new this year at Columbia Invitational, but they rank teams first by round and then by the composite speaker scores" Chantal answers.
Chantal, finishing thirteenth in extemp at Columbia? This is completely unlike her! That's not the Chantal on whom we school personnel pinned the debate team's hopes before she enrolled here in the first place! The Chantal as of this season's Isidore Newman was probably more like it, Glen realizes there's something fishy with Chantal. Especially since Chantal captained the debate team for this season right after Grapevine and, because of this poor (by her standards) showing at Columbia, lost captaincy after that tournament.
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When Valerie invites Faith to the family home that night, the two of them are in Valerie's bedroom...
"Thank God we don't have to worry about the VMC, we can focus fully on the AIME and hence the spring Math Madness. However, because some of our best players are also competing at the VMC, don't expect us to perform as well as we did in Fall" Valerie explains the situation to her teammate.
"There's a question I don't understand. It appeared in a past game we played this season, and I got it wrong then" Faith then shows her teammate the question.
Find the number of ordered pairs of integers (a,b) such that the sequence 3,4,5,a,b,30,40,50 is strictly increasing and no set of four terms (not necessarily consecutive) terms forms an arithmetic progression.
"First step: count the number of integers between six and twenty-nine"
"Twenty-four, but we can already eliminate six and twenty, so twenty-two integers are still allowed" Faith reasons.
Oh my God, this was a question of the game against Whitman and the hardest question of that game! Faith muses, but this is where she is stuck. Faith can probably conjure the number of 2-number combinations among 22, or 21*22/2, but no more than that.
Sure, the VAs won that regular-season game against Walt Whitman (Maryland), but Nicole out-performed Faith during the entire Math Madness season. Yet that was mostly because the learning curve for that tournament was not nearly as steep for Nicole as it was for Faith. In short, Nicole wasn't forced to learn 2 years of math in 2 months, unlike Faith. But there still was a curve nonetheless.
"This gives me two hundred thirty-one combinations, yet the correct answer was two hundred twenty-eight" Faith complains to her teammate.
"What are you having trouble with? Finding the other unauthorized combinations?" Valerie asks her teammate.
"Thus far I can make out seven and nine is not allowed, because, you know, three, five, seven, nine, so I'm down to two hundred thirty"
"Unauthorized combinations share one thing in common: the difference between the highest and lowest numbers in those must be a multiple of three"
Faith then tries all combinations involving one number on the left-hand side and one number on the right-hand side to see whether the difference between them was a multiple of 3. She found three of these, but 5 and 50 was not allowed since the third number in the resulting sequence exceeded 30.
"A-ha! The unauthorized combinations I missed were twelve and twenty-one as well as sixteen and twenty-eight!" Faith exclaims.
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Speaking of the AIME, in the minds of so many in the parish, the frontrunners are obvious: Jennifer, Valerie and Cristiano in descending order of expected AIME scores. Phil might be a dark horse for the USAMO, but Faith and Nicole would be lucky to score anything beyond a 6. Or so Glen's estimates would lie; the VAs have a total of 7 mathletes at the AIME this year, and the final male mathlete is in the same boat as Faith, or so he would be led to think. Which is more or less what ends up happening on the AIME, upon release of the results in early March.
"Good morning everyone, the results of the AIME are released and we have a mixed USAMO team this year for the first time! Jennifer scored a thirteen, Valerie scored a twelve and Cristiano scored a ten!" He then runs down the remainder of the mathletes at the AIME, Phil, with his 8, missed the USAMO and the other 3 scored 6s.
Stolen story; please report.
Obviously, Glen remained true to his word and scheduled Faith's mother to sub for Trent during the USAMO as he did for both TSTs (1 in December and 1 in January), the RMM (the previous week) and the APMO (next week). He then requests something of his daughter that day during recess:
"From now until the start of the EGMO I no longer want you to practice with Faith or Nicole; you will practice with Jennifer instead. Understood?" Glen proceeds to shout at Valerie.
"Over the summer, you asked the same thing of me, what will happen next year, when there won't be a Jennifer here anymore?" Valerie whines in front of his father. "I feel like I have no control over who I am allowed to train with! Plus, next year, I will need to train with both Faith and Nicole: Faith for the USAMO and the IMO, Nicole for the VMC, so I may as well get used to them now!"
Now I understand why Daisy eschewed the math team; after seeing how it was playing out with Gen, she found the math team too intense for her. She still needed to work some in LD, but since debate is still mostly flying under the radar, she can juggle both debate and theater without too much trouble, Valerie reflects on what could have been with Daisy as a mathlete, rather than Faith.
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Yet, he realizes, two weeks after the release of the AIME results, that the spring Math Madness is well underway but that the money from the Fall playoffs has already been spent. As much as I'd love to send Chantal off to the ToC, our budget is already committed through the first round of the Spring playoffs. Speaking of the first round, it happens on the same week as the debate district qualifier so we'll know by then whether we can send her off to the ToC or not because doing so will be borne out of the second round's revenue, Glen reflects upon the financial implications of the Math Madness playoff revenues for Chantal's postseason.
Speaking of playoffs, it's obvious that something is amiss during that game. For as long as the VAs have participated in the Math Madness, the town has been used to strong performances from their beloved VAs. However, it appears that the people at either the USAMO, the VMC or both tournaments are slower to respond than they were in Fall. Or make some stupid mistakes at times. Which means that fatigue has set in for some of them. And somehow, it's not Jennifer or Valerie carrying the rest of the team on their backs, but... Faith. A Faith in whom the entire town has somehow placed its faith for this game. And no one seems to make more prayers for her than Chantal.
A nervous Chantal, seated on the front row by virtue of the debate coach buying her a ticket for the game, is wondering whether the other mathletes are going to get their act together and answer questions with the same aplomb as they did in Fall, knowing that this game carries implications for her. However, the other component to this postseason puzzle is, well, the district qualifier. The decision tree is as follows: if the VAs win this game, or I'm the only one winning a Nats berth later this week, I will attend the ToC. If the VAs lose this game and we win more than one Nats berth, then I will attend Nats only. If the VAs win this game and we win more than one Nats berth, I will attend both, Chantal ruminates, with one eye on the scoreboard.
And the fatigue appears to have taken its toll on the VAs by the end of the game, but this was a tight loss. One measly little point separated the VAs and their opponents.
"Oh crap, now my postseason is in the hands of my teammates!" Chantal laments from her seat in the front row.
And the donations from a possible IMO qualification would come too late to help Chantal attend the ToC. It's irresponsible for me to have her attend the ToC on what's essentially borrowed money, Glen muses while his heartbreak over this team's results make him believe that perhaps the mathletic schedule is too intense. Or at least on those the town expects most from, on either the USAMO (for Valerie), the VMC (for Nicole and Phil) or both (for Cristiano and Jennifer).
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While, of course, the town was ecstatic for about a day when the quiz bowl team won State again, the USAMO begins in earnest, and nothing out of the ordinary is happening from this tournament itself. But on that week, on Friday night, he warns Valerie while telling her about going to see the Venomous Agendas at the district qualifier.
"Valerie, for the first time I'm forced to acknowledge that your mathletic training regimen has been too intense for your own good. It even caused you to falter in the spring Math Madness playoffs. You will have tomorrow to wind down, while I'm away in Bâton-Rouge until Saturday night"
"For months I've been training on solving USA/EG/IMO problems, and often with Jennifer, as you asked me time and time again! Last time I could catch a break was last year's HSNCT!" Valerie whines about her predicament.
"I will go, too! This season wouldn't be complete without either Chantal or Sadie qualifying for Nats, and I don't want to miss it! It's history in the making for us! For the first time we could actually even have a Nats berth in debate!" Selena also explains that she will not be home when the district qualifier is underway.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, along with a couple of parents of the players competing at the district qualifiers, as well as the Congressional players and their respective parents, the parents leave Jennings for Bâton-Rouge Magnet so they can support the Venomous Agendas on the debate floor for the first time in forever, and both wearing the green and the purple of the VAs. After all, the local public treats the tournament as if it is a state championship...
Once at Bâton-Rouge Magnet, the VA fans review where their favorites stand up to this point in the tournament. Policy is 1-1, but somehow lost to the freaking neighboring parish, Chantal is in the top 2 positions, PF is up 3-0, orat isn't going to advance, Daisy is 2-1 and the male LD player is 1-2.
The couple then splits up and watches different games to start the day: Selena watches Daisy duke it out against a Benjamin-Franklin player, while Glen is watching Sadie's final preliminary game even though he already knows Sadie is advancing. So there are potentially as many as 6 players who can possibly play at Nats. I only planned for 3, that is, Chantal and Sadie's pair; this is going to be a financial nightmare if all 6 make it, Glen sighs, before watching the third international extemp game at this tournament.
Chantal's room, strangely enough, has far more spectators than all other extemp rooms, and is filled to capacity, which was not the case for the other 3 rooms in which extemp games took place. Then everyone in that room watch Chantal talk about "is Iran facing an economic recession?" as this IX round deals with the Middle East.
But because of the diminutive field in international extemp this year, there are only 3 IX games and 7 players total. Once the result from that game arrives, it's obvious to the VAs that Chantal is going to compete at Nats.
Then, after that extemp game, comes Sadie's semifinal game (there is no final at the district qualifier in PF since Louisiana is entitled to 2 berths), which Sadie's pair won with an argument the opponent failed to address. On lunch break, Chantal comes to Sadie...
"Yay! We're going to the Nats together!" Chantal exclaims in front of the VAs' fans that just left the room in which the semifinal Sadie's team just played was held.
After lunch, the entire team, plus any Venomous Agendas' fans, congregate in the largest room available for debate games, to endure two hours of people speaking faster than they could make heads of, since the Venomous Agendas broke in policy, and could earn a third Nats berth. But Bâton-Rouge Magnet's only remaining hope for NSDA Nats lie in defeating the Venomous Agendas in policy, since they were beaten by Teurlings Catholic in LD, and didn't break in PF, nor did they finish in the top 2 in Senate or any speech event, or top 4 in House.
Two hours of highly technical debating later, played in front of a 3-judge panel, the verdict is rendered by the chief judge announcing the decision to the audience:
"And, on the aff, Bâton-Rouge KH wins, two to one!" the chief judge announces in front of a mixed crowd.
Before the team and its fans return home, they attend the awards ceremony, and at the same time, the implications of Sadie winning a Nats berth for Chantal's postseason. "But this means no ToC for you, Chantal" the voice of the debate coach rings in his head while the parents return home after the tournament ends. "But we will need to beg money at church, from admins, and even host our own dinner for Nats"
By Monday, news of the VAs' wins at the district qualifier became known widely across town. A team that was hitherto flying under the radar now becomes a household name across the entire parish. Even so, he feels necessary to deliver an announcement on it at school, or rather, to let the players involve do so before class.
"Good morning, everyone, I am Chantal Morin, a sophomore. For the first time, we have a berth at the NSDA National Speech and Debate Tournament since I won international extemp at the district qualifier held last weekend!"
"I'm Joe, a junior, and my teammate Sadie let me deliver this announcement. Like Chantal, I won a Nats berth, but in public forum!"
"This season, all three of our academic teams are competing on the national stage! For years to come, debate will no longer fly under the town's radar!" a jubilant Glen shouts after the two players delivered the announcement.