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Friday, November 19, 2010

UT-Austin Tournament Itinerary

A detailed itinerary and information sheet is now posted under attachments on our website.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Success at UNT

I'm so proud of you all for the quality of your individual and team achievements at the UNT tournament, our second tournament of the year. The team of Eihab Khan and Survaish Khastgir brought home the semifinalist trophy after seven rounds of debate in a pool of 45 teams from several states. They were undefeated coming out of the prelims. Wow! What an accomplishment in sheer intellectual strength and debate skills. I thought it was particularly awesome that the entire team voted to stay to watch the K-K team to the finish, even though it meant spending the extra night. We learned so much from the experience, not the least of which is the power of team spirit!

The Casady team overall had a winning record at the tournament, which is outstanding given that this was our first tournament on the Texas Forensic Association circuit. Congratulations to you all!

It was a fantastic experience -- exhausting, but amazing, too. We learned how to cope with adversity, how to apply ourselves to overcome weaknesses, and how to keep on fighting, no matter what. We learned that the guys can eat more Jack in the Box food in one day than is physically possible outside of the world of debate, and that we can all put away Chili's grub like champions, even at midnight. We learned that we don't like 8:00am rounds, but with multiple Monster drinks, we can debate for at least 14 hours straight. We prefer that our judges stay awake during rounds, and that they vote on what is actually on the flow rather than what got kicked three speeches ago. We learned that we learn a lot from critiques, but we still would rather win than lose!

We learned that we know what we know, but what we don't know is what we don't know. In other words, we did great at UNT, but now we know what we don't know, so let's get to work to get ready for UT!


Go Cyclone Debate!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Getting ready for UNT

Our next tournament is this week! You should be reading files to familiarize yourself with your cards. Be sure to read the itinerary and give a copy to your parents. It is available on our class website. Travel and computer forms need to be signed and turned in before you can travel. Let me know if you have any questions.