Because there are no quiz bowl tournaments taking place after State, the B-team high school players are given a plan to improve upon their knowledge base over the summer, which is sent to them by email before Flo leaves Southside. Which essentially means they are released from any further practices until the end of the year.
After the improvement plans are made for the B-team players, Flo's attention turns to the middle school team along with the high school team.
"From here until the MSNCT, I want everyone to study from past HSNCT-level sets, and all practices until then will be made using past questions of high-level tournaments. And maybe even collegiate questions as appropriate for you guys" Flo announces to the team.
"Collegiate questions?" an astonished middle school player asks her, believing he has his hands full with even high school questions. "Isn't that a bit much for us middle schoolers? I mean, all year, you made us practice using high school questions!"
"It's a big maybe, but HSNCT questions will be the absolute hardest you will be exposed to for now" Flo retorts, believing that exposure to increasingly higher levels of questions will get them to improve as players, provided the increase isn't too sudden.
They keep discussing their training plans on the way back to Jennings, and Cindy especially feels like Hathaway has ruined their experience at State.
On Monday morning, Norman makes his announcement, with various players in his office waiting for their turns to deliver their respective teams' announcements. The debate team goes first.
"Although, this year, we earned no berths at the NSDA Nats, we still delivered some strong performances..." Nick, the debate captain, then lists the strongest rankings of Venomous Agenda debaters at the district qualifier. "So we look forward to attending Last Chance in late April to earn Nats berths!"
Hopefully Steven won't clash with Norman about Last Chance the way I did with Marianne three years ago, especially not when the circumstances have changed. Three years ago, we had two Nats berths going into Last Chance, now we don't have any, Flo sighs, upon hearing the words Last Chance being uttered by the current debate captain. Who hands off the mic to Sonny.
"This is Sonny Kwyjibo, the high school quiz bowl captain. At quiz bowl-State last Saturday, we finished second in the large high school division as well as in the middle school division! Best of luck to the Venomous Agendas at the MSNCT and HSNCT!"
Steven summons Flo to his office at lunch regarding a matter he feels must be discussed weeks in advance.
"Since we earned no Nats berths at the district qualifier, with the assistant coach, we decided to have everyone on the debate team attend Last Chance. However, a judge we used in earlier online tournaments can't make it at Last Chance" Steven introduces the matter to Flo.
The assistant debate coach keeps a low profile in the community because the assistant coach is a substitute teacher, even Flo would know that person more as a substitute than as a debate coach, Steven muses, while realizing that he can't have the bus driver judge online tournaments either.
"So what happened to that judge?" Flo asks him, anticipating that she would be asked to judge at Last Chance.
"That judge is out of town for business" Steven answers, referring to a parent judge. "If you accept to judge at Last Chance, I will even let you choose what events you're available to judge" Steven makes his offer to Flo, knowing that he needs her to judge if he plans on having everyone play at Last Chance.
"Why have everyone play at Last Chance? In the past, here, Last Chance participation was for players who fell short of a Nats berth, but were sufficiently close to one for it to be worthwhile" Flo questions the rationale of making the whole team play there.
"We had near-misses in multiple events, and a few more games would benefit even those who weren't even close to a Nats berth" Steven explains himself.
"I can judge LD, PF and World Schools, just like any other online debate tournament I judged. Is that good?" Flo suggests to him.
"I accept, but you probably know that, at Last Chance, if you declare more than one format on the judging manifest, they will assign which one for you" Steven then writes down Flo's information on the VAs' judging manifest at Last Chance.
"And the principal is OK with making the entire team play at Last Chance? By letting the players announce they will attend Last Chance, he might have implicitly allowed players to enter..."
"I already discussed that plan with Norman before the district qualifiers even began"
"Good: apparently fights over Last Chance were part of what made the previous principal transfer to another school"
Steven gasps upon hearing about how the VAs' last run at Last Chance caused the previous principal to transfer. Especially since, officially, Marianne's transfer out of VA was attributed to deteriorating relationships with parents and school personnel.
"Normally, a debate team doesn't cause a principal to transfer, unless mismanagement of finances or discipline problems occur. However, Nats berths are expensive, and so are ToC ones, and we earned none of the latter" Steven wonders how much money is left from mathletics after the HSNCT is accounted for.
"And yet, if we fall on the debate floor, so will southwest Louisiana"
But Flo is right; the forecast would be that, realistically, we earn maybe three berths at most. For our players, Last Chance is a second chance to earn Nats berths. We didn't attend it in the past two years, though, the cold, hard truth of the VAs attending Last Chance hits Steven like a ton of bricks.
Phew: at least Norman has a better attitude towards Last Chance, and we won't risk Last Chance causing him to leave, Flo sighs, while she blocks off Thursday and Friday nights, as well as the entire day on Saturday the week Last Chance is held on her agenda, so she can cover her obligations as a VA judge at Last Chance. And read up on the topics in use at Last Chance accordingly, so she can be prepared to face these obligations.
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Fast forward to the week of Last Chance, in late April, and the afternoon announcement is delivered by Steven about the VAs attending Last Chance.
"Tonight is the opening night of Last Chance, and our VAs playing Lincoln-Douglas and public forum are in action for the first two preliminary rounds!" Steven then gives instructions to the student body and staff on how to follow the VAs attending Last Chance.
After she attends the Thursday judge meeting at four-fifteen PM, her first round is assigned. LD it is I guess, for the next three days, she sighs, even though her heart lied in judging either public forum or World Schools. Before the first LD round begins, she asks something of her dad:
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
"Dad, could you please keep little Ben out of my room until Saturday night?" Flo asks her father right as the first LD round of Last Chance begins. "I need to work from home until about eight fifteen PM tonight, as well as tomorrow!"
"Don't worry about that. I will be playing with him, feed him and put him to sleep" Flo's father tries to reassure her, while he picks up Ben to give him a toy.
Flo then turns to the feed of the first round assigned to her, talking like a quiz bowl moderator starting a quiz bowl game. "This is round one of the Lincoln-Douglas preliminaries at the 2039 NSDA Last Chance Qualifier. On the affirmative, we have, from Eden Prairie in Minnesota, Vivek Gupta, and, on the negative, we have from Torrey Pines in California, Jason Zhu..."
Remember: at Last Chance, I will not be made to judge games with a player from my own state. So I won't be made to judge VA games, Flo tries to keep her calm when the player on the aff starts his opening statement with his framework and key definitions to understand the topic.
She's lucky that the first round is relatively free of major issues, and both players are relatively good at debating the resolution as a value resolution. At the same time, neither player dominated the game's clash of ideas, and she feels forced to resort to speaker points to decide the game. Hence the feeling that some might have that traditional LD is about who "sounds better", or at least when rounds cannot be decided on argumentation alone. And certainly a VA fan or two who check the results of the first round.
The second round, on the other hand, makes her feel like one of the players deliberately played poorly because of that player perceives as bad judging luck, because judging is random at Last Chance prelims.
After that player in question has finished delivering the negative rebuttal, the player on the neg starts drifting. Looking at the paradigm, I could tell right away that I would have struck her if mutual judge preference was in effect. In fact, a lot of judges would have been struck here, that player starts thinking of what judges would have been preferred over Flo.
Unsurprisingly, the aff wins that game and the neg's reason for decision (judgment) is chock-full of flaws in their argumentation from a logical perspective. And finally, why Flo feels like that player's overreliance on mutual judge preferences would hurt him later in life.
Once the video feed is cut, and the ballot is released, Flo starts screaming and venting about the poor quality of the game:
"Sacrament! That round is almost a textbook example of how a debater, being too used to running one style of argument, debates against someone using another style of argument!" Flo starts venting about this round's issues.
"Could you please elaborate?" Flo's mom asks her.
Flo then sends an electronic copy of the judgment of the last game to her parents. Upon briefly reading the judgment from that game, Florence's mom then confides the following to her:
"Jesus! It has been years since I last watched a LD round, and you say this is a competitor at Last Chance?" Flo's mom yelps when saying Last Chance. "I wonder why that player even entered Last Chance..."
"I was so busy judging LD games that I forgot about our VAs at Last Chance; are any of our players in position to advance to playoff rounds?" Flo asks her mother to check Tabroom for LD and PF entries.
"Yes, one entry apiece in PF and LD finishing the day two-nothing, but the other LD player finished the day one-one"
Sure, the VAs might be on track to clear to triple-octos in LD and in PF, but the next day is a big day for VA's academic teams. For mathletics fans, the Vans Math Contest final takes place on Friday night, while, for debate fans, Congress, domestic extemp and humorous interp all start playing that night.
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And, as with the VAs' previous run through Last Chance, tickets are sold for the Saturday session of Last Chance. It's easy to imagine the state of mind of the VA fanbase when the following is heard at the beginning of the Saturday session, before the actual games begin:
"For the Venomous Agendas! For Southwest Louisiana!" Nick, the VAs' domestic extemper, shouts in the classroom where he's playing from, right before the topic draw begins for the third DX preliminary round.
None of the VAs' debate players played to a crowd the size of the crowd they draw for Last Chance before. Each entry is allotted one room. So VA fans could come from one room to another and watch different events on the same ticket. Speaking of tickets, Flo's parents warn her, going into it:
"We'll go to Last Chance, we'll bring little Ben with us at Last Chance" Flo's father then picks up Ben and then puts him in the baby stroller, en route to VA's campus.
The last two preliminary rounds are pretty uneventful for Flo, and she deems the VAs' run into Last Chance worth following. However, at the conclusion of the sixth preliminary LD round, she has mixed feelings since only one of the two players will advance to the playoff phase. However, as PF finished Saturday morning with a 4-2 record, they, too advance to triple-octos.
Triple-octos, while rough to the players, are not that grating for the judges. However, since, at Last Chance, the tournament's outrounds are not played in full, play ends after double-octos (PF and LD) or quarterfinals (all other events the VAs entered).
Speaking of double-octos, Florence's judging assignment makes her squirm. DCC against another private school, this time in Georgia. I don't know how I feel: it's very tempting for me to just give a loss to DCC immediately, and wait until the very end to fill out a RFD, and write some semblance of room for improvement in the judgment, out of loyalty for VA, but whatever I do, I must keep quiet about VA vis-à-vis DCC. Wait a minute: why should I rig a debate game? If DCC loses, they should do so fair and square! Flo is more confused than ever, even when the other two judges in this double-octos game are reluctant to start it.
"This is the double-octofinals in Lincoln-Douglas at the 2039 NSDA Last Chance Qualifier. On the affirmative, we have, from Paideia School in Georgia, Peach DeKalb, on the negative, we have, from Detroit Catholic Central in Michigan, Juan Vasquez" Flo announces, once again speaking like a quiz bowl moderator.
And this game makes her want to scream, but she couldn't do so out of courtesy. So, while they still make an attempt to speak at a speed that's not fast enough to amount to spreading, the arguments they run, presumably because the other two judges are more progressive than Flo, tend to devolve into an escalation of impacts, with their linkages to the resolution getting weaker with each extra argument being run. Ciboire! They're both trying to prove how the opposite side would lead to mass extinction, and the slippery slopes they're both going down are costing them speaker points! Did they get there by sheer luck? Flo ruminates on the arguments and, while neither dominated the clash, or what passes for one, neither actually convinced her of anything.
Meanwhile, on VA's campus, the LD game proves very tight as well, but rather than having a game that seems to amount to two players riding the same slippery slope, Stella, the VAs' LD player still in contention calls the opponent out on the slippery slope and argues why that slippery slope is inconsistent with both sides' criteria.
With PF being eliminated in triple-octos, there may still be hope for the VAs at Last Chance outside of LD, under the form of one House and one Senate player apiece, as well as the DX player, since, as funny as the HI player was, the VAs' comic was eliminated in octos.
Back to the DCC vs Paideia game, the time for judgment has arrived, and a dazed and confused Florence still struggles, crushed under the proverbial weight of both players having ridden a slippery slope, tries to sort out whether either side has any redeeming quality. It's tough, and I can't even rely on speaker points anymore, since both players have zeros from me. As much as I don't want DCC to win, Paideia forced my hand: they played just as poorly. If I could award a tie, I would do so without hesitation. But I can't. When in doubt, cross-ex can turn the tide, Flo then reluctantly gives a small edge to Paideia. She sighs, then goes into the cupboard looking for some comfort food to eat now that LD at this tournament is over. And Paideia winning this game 2-1.
On Monday morning, as the AP test season begins, Norman has the two players winning Nats berths in his office, waiting for their turn to deliver their parts.
"This weekend, at Last Chance, our debate team, and therefore southwest Louisiana, has won two berths at the National Speech and Debate Tournament! We raised over six hundred dollars at Last Chance, going into their expenses of attending Nats. I will leave the floor to our champions" Norman then hands off to the VAs' debaters in his office.
"I, Stella Taivor, qualified in Lincoln-Douglas debate by virtue of winning my double-octos game three-nothing against the Village School"
"This is Nick Thomas, I finished thirteenth in the domestic extemp quarterfinals at Last Chance"
"Thank you all, and good luck both at Nats and in your AP exams, if you take them" Norman makes his wishes to the student body, before the debaters go to their classrooms.