Last changed on
Wed October 2, 2024 at 1:35 PM EDT
I debated PF all through high school, coached all through college, and am now coaching at Walt Whitman High School in Maryland. My role in the round is to interpret the world you aim to create, and to that end you should tell me explicitly what it is you are trying to do. I stick to the flow as well as I can.
common question answers:
1. Anything that needs to be on the ballot, needs to be in Final Focus, and anything in final needs to be in summary.
2. The first speaking team should be predicting the offense in first summary that needs to be responded to, and putting defense on it then. This ALSO means that the second speaking team has to frontline in the rebuttal. Any arguments/defense that are not in the First Summary are dropped, and any arguments that are not frontlined in the second rebuttal are dropped.
3. Summary to Final Focus consistency is key, especially in terms of the relevance of arguments, if something is going to be a huge deal, it should be so in both speeches. You're better off using your new 3 minute summary to make your link and impact extensions cleaner than you are packing it full of args.
4. I will call for cards that I think are important, and I will throw them out if they are bad or misrepresented, regardless of if they are challenged in the round. sometimes when two arguments are clashing with little to no analysis, this is the only way to settle it.
As a note, I am pretty hard on evidence, especially as sharing docs is becoming more popular. If you are making an argument, and the evidence is explicitly making a different argument, I won't be able to flow your arg.
Speed is fine, but spreading isn't. I'll evaluate critical arguments if they have a solid link, but they have to link to the topic y'all, so they basically have to be a critical disad.
I evaluate theory if it's needed, but I'm really skeptical of how often that is.
Feel free to ask for anything else you need to know.
You should pre-flow before the start time of the round, that will help your speaks!