Cyclones Soar with Eagles

The debate team brought home four trophies from the University of North Texas John Gossett Memorial tournament this past weekend.

In novice policy, Ananya Bhaktaram and Rachel King had a 4-1 record in prelims and made quarterfinalist. Noah Hassoun and Seondre Carolina also had a 4-1 record and finished as semifinalists. Noah was named 3rd top speaker and Ananya was named 9th top speaker out of 36 competitors.

In varsity policy, Fiona Rendon, Deja Kirk, Ben Pennington and Conner Coles all came away with 3-2 records, and the team of Olivia Pribich and Natasha Spicer had a 4-1 record and finished as octafinalists. Olivia received 7th top speaker honors out of 86 competitors.

Congratulations to the debate team on this outstanding performance!

Grapevine Report

Two teams traveled to Grapevine, TX to compete in the Grapevine Classic. Olivia and Natasha finished prelims with a 3-2 record, placing them in the top half of the field. This is the first time we, as a squad, have had a winning record at a bid tournament. Congrats, ladies! This is an excellent start to the year.

The sophomore team of Deja and Fiona went 2-3 at their very first bid tourney. Congrats on a well fought fight! Resilience and persistence will pay off down the road.

Up next: Edmond North and St. Mark's. Go Cyclones!

Ready, Set, Start Your Timers!

The 2013-2014 season is already underway! We are excited to welcome so many new novices to the Casady debate team this year. From middle division to upper division, our students love to win arguments! Camp was a blast, and Danny and I hope that all of our novices are here to stay. The fun is just beginning.

The varsity met for a pre-season topic discussion, camp re-cap and to divvy up case and block writing assignments. For the coaches, it was awesome to see all of that energy coming out of the summer debate institutes that our students attended. We can't wait to see all those honed skills in action at the varsity round robin tournament on Saturday, August 24. Novices -- feel free to stop by and watch. Let me know if you have any questions! I look forward to seeing you all this week at school! Debate meets 3rd hour on Wednesday. Don't forget that you are welcome to lock you laptops up in the debate room during the school day.

Casady Debate Camp

Click here to register online for our own Casady Debate Camp for students in grades 7-9 who are either interested in discovering the world of policy debate or are joining the team as 9th graders this year. It is important that all new team members participate in this pre-season camp. Email me at drblgerard@gmail.com if you have questions!

UCO Camp Opportunity

Click here for more information. Deadline is July 10, so don't delay. This is a great local option to introduce novice debaters to debate or to brush up on skills and learn about the upcoming year's topic for varsity debaters who were unable to attend other camps this year.

Summer Camp

Hey everybody!

I hope your summer has been going well. We're approaching that time of the year when you go off to debate camp and have loads of educational fun. I hope you have a great time and learn a lot. We have one little request for you so that the team can be better prepared to start the year than we have been in years past.

At the end of each week,  please e-mail us (dabbas346@gmail.com & drblgerard@gmail.com) a summary of what's been going on in your labs. Preferably, the summaries would include:

-What arguments you're working on.
-What arguments your lab is working on.
-What arguments you're hearing other labs are doing.
-What you did in lab the previous week (speaking drills? research drills? flowing? etc.).
-E-mail us any files that have been completed (Alexandria got us started with ENDI files, thanks!).

This will help us prepare earlier so that we have a head-start on organization, filing, and our summer research, instead of just absorbing all the information when everybody gets back.

Please e-mail me now to confirm that you read this, and let me know who your lab leaders are.

Again, I hope you have a great time at camp. Also, if you have any questions at all during camp (argument-wise, or Chicago-awesomeness -- Ben/ConNer), don't be afraid to shoot me an e-mail.

Thanks,

Danny

Shout Out to New Team Members

I hope everyone is having a great summer so far! Hopefully the crazy bad weather is over and we can soak up some summer sunshine. I am enjoying spending time with my family. We are getting ready to go to Disney World!

I am excited to be welcoming seven new members to the debate team for the 2013-2014 season: Ananya, Rachel, Hunter, Ellie, Alexandria and Gracie! If you are going to debate camp, please keep in touch with me and Olivia about your progress and what you are learning. If you need some moral support, don't hesitate to email us!! If you are not going to camp, please send me and Olivia your email address so that we can send you an invitation to the debate drop box (online file server) and helpful research and study links. Once you are on the drop box, you should explore the folders, especially the Class and 13-14 South America Topic ones. We will be adding stuff to the topic folder as the summer goes on.

Newbies (or babies, as you will henceforth affectionately be known!), you should also BE SURE YOU SIGN UP FOR CASADY DEBATE CAMP through extended programs under the Parent Hub on the Casady website. You will learn the basic procedures and vocabulary of policy debate, get introduced to the topic, and practice your skills. It is very important that you come to camp if you are in town. The dates are August 5-8 from 12:30-2:30 in the Upper Division -- Hightower 6. Let me know if you have any questions! See you soon!

Cyclone Alert on the National(s) Radar!

The debate team competed in the National Forensic League West Oklahoma District tournament this past weekend, March 7-9, at the University of Oklahoma. This tournament was the qualifier for the annual NFL national tournament, to be held this year in Birmingham, Alabama in June. Four Casady policy teams competed in the district tournament, all of whom finished with winning records. Ultimately, the team of Connor Dube' and Olivia Pribich proceeded through seven rounds of this double-elimination competition and won their final round to qualify for nationals with a 6-1 overall record.

Connor and Olivia are the first Casady team to qualify for the NFL national tournament in our three years of existence as a program. This is an incredible accomplishment for a number of reasons. We are only in our second year of having a varsity level squad, so our team is very young. Additionally, Connor and Olivia are both second-year debaters. The other two teams who qualified were seniors from Moore High School and Heritage Hall. Finally, this year's district tourney was the largest in the history of our district; 33 teams competed in policy debate, so the field was quite a challenge.

Connor and Olivia have traveled extensively to compete on the national circuit this year, and the high level of competition at tournaments like Greenhill, St. Mark's, UT Austin, Montgomery Bell Academy, Heritage Hall and Harvard has helped them learn and develop steadily in this extremely difficult activity.

Casady's two other varsity teams competing were Eihab Khan and Natasha Spicer, and Adam Hassoun and Sidney Jones. Also impressive was our novice team. The policy division combines all policy debaters into one group, rather than dividing them into varsity, JV, etc. Our freshman team of Conner Coles and Fiona Rendon finished with a 3-2 record against primarily varsity debaters.

Connor and Olivia have also been accepted to compete at the National Debate Coaches Association national tournament, to be held in Nashville, TN in April. Go Cyclones!

The Harvard Report

This is rather a late posting, so I do apologize.... we've been a little busy getting qualified for nationals!!! (More on that shortly...)

Our team motto has always been, "we're not always sure how we get there, but somehow or other, we always get there!" It took multiple planes to get us to Boston for the Harvard tournament, in addition to a wide array of transportation infrastructure -- planes, trains, and automobiles -- but we made it, and so did the bad weather! Whether trudging up Massachusetts Avenue in the bitter, icy wind with snow blasting our bare eyeballs in the middle of the night, or rushing from round to round in the blustery blizzard conditions, the weather treated us to some fantastic endurance challenges during our five-day stay. Through it all, we managed to debate thirteen rounds (and judge sixteen!) against 300 policy teams from across the country. Race and disabilities were the topics of choice for most teams, so we debated critical arguments on both sides of the flow practically the entire time! While our varsity only managed to win two rounds, the experience was invaluable in preparing them for the nationals qualifying tournament (more on that shortly...). The novi boys competed in JV, which was comprised of teams from the novice to the varsity level who were not competing in varsity. They handled the challenge respectably, finishing with a 3-3 record for the boys and a 2-4 record for the girls. Great job everyone!

We got to spend one day be-bopping around Boston, shopping for Harvard souvenirs, sampling the fare at Faneuil Hall Market, exploring the glass flowers and amazing fossil skeletons at the Natural History Museum, and experiencing the olfactory joys of the open-tank Boston aquarium. We also improved our mass transit skills through many and many a subway ride, and we ate more lobster and seafood than we care to record here!

Many, many thanks go out to the Rendons, Mrs. Kirk, and Dr. Chakraburtty for accompanying us on this incredible adventure! From your help in navigating the city, to providing much-needed sustenance in between rounds, to making a special trip to Copley Square for a new Mac charger to replace mine that suddenly decided to quit on me -- we couldn't have done it without you!!

The jury is still out on whether to brave Boston again next year or aim for a milder clime in the direction of Berkeley.... as always, I'm sure I will let the kids decide!

Norman/Colleyville Report

This past weekend, Natasha and Adam competed in the varsity champs division at Norman High School and finished with a record of 3 and 1. 

Several teams also competed at the national circuit Colleyville Heritage Invitational tournament in Texas. The varsity came away with victories over Houston Reagan and St. Marks’s. In the novice policy division, Conner Coles ended up debating on his own and broke to elims as a maverick with a 4 and 1 record. On Saturday, he gave a total of 20 speeches over 14 straight hours of debating, winning every ballot until finally dropping to Highland Park in the finals. Conner came home with the finalist trophy and earned 6^th ranked speaker out of 50 speakers in the division. In addition, Fiona Rendon made 10^th speaker.

Congratulations to the team for these outstanding accomplishments.

Happenings at the Hall

We took four teams to compete at the J.W. Patterson Invitational at Heritage Hall on January 19-20. Our varsity teams competed in the finals-bid varsity division, each bringing home 3 victories and 4 losses. Our novices dominated the field in the novice round robin, which brought together some of the strongest novice teams from an eight-state region. Conner Coles and Ben Pennington won six out of ten ballots, coming in second place in their prelim pod. Deja Kirk and Fiona Rendon won their prelim pod and advanced to semifinals, where they lost to Coppell on a cap k. With extremely high speaker points, Fiona wound up winning second top speaker! We are very proud of our young women and the entire team for their valiant effort at this prestigious tournament.

Heritage Hall Tourney this Weekend

We have four teams competing in the J.W. Patterson Invitational at Heritage Hall this Saturday through Monday, January 19-21. The tournament is a T.O.C. finals bid qualifier. Good luck, Cyclones!

Jenks Results

Despite the rainy, icy weather, the team shined with victories at Jenks this year. All our varsity teams broke with 3-1 records out of prelims in the Champs division, in a field of 25 teams from Oklahoma and Missouri. Eihab-Natasha and Adam-Sidney finished as quarterfinalists, and Olivia-Defne finished as semifinalists. The "toddlers" -- frosh teams Fiona-Deja and Conner-Agnish -- debated "up" in the champs division for the first time ever, and they both came away with 2-2 records. It was a great learning experience in preparation for the tough competition in the novice round robin at the J.W. Patterson novice round robin next weekend.

"It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be," said Fiona.

The "babies" -- our seventh grade boys, Justin and Jackson -- traveled with us to compete in the novice round robin at Jenks. They continued to hold strong, finishing with a 2-2 record.

We left before the awards ceremony in order to beat the bad weather home, so I'll post any other awards as I hear of them. Great work, Casady!

2013-14 Topic Announced

On January 10, the NFHS announced the new policy debate topic for 2013-2014. Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its economic engagement toward Cuba, Mexico or Venezuela.

Students need to be getting their summer camp reservations made, as the best camps fill up fast. Talk to Dr. Gerard about the best camp for you.

Casady Debate Makes Debut at MBA

On January 4, 2013, Olivia and Connor traveled with Dr. Gerard and Coach Danny to Nashville, TN to compete in the prestigious Southern Bell Forum hosted by Montgomery Bell Academy.

The all-boys' school was founded in 1867, and the Southern Bell is in its 26th year and is highly regarded as the most competitive policy debate tournament on the national circuit. Only the top team from a select group of schools is invited each year. Casady was fortunate enough to be invited as a vote of confidence in our fledgling program. We enjoyed exceptional southern hospitality, and Dr. Gerard was even recognized and given a commemorative bottle of Jack's Barbecue Sauce (Kansas City Style), and a brass bell. 

Although the competition was the toughest we have ever encountered, our team managed to stay afloat, finishing with a 2-4 record. To keep that in perspective, it is not uncommon for schools to compete at the Southern Bell for several years before winning a single round! We had hoped to win at least one round, so to come away with two victories, three close rounds, and only one clear-cut loss was cause for celebration. Congrats to Olivia and Connor for their valiant effort. They laid the groundwork for future Casady policy teams to shine at the Southern Bell!