Botwin,+Andrew

Affiliation: University High School

Background I debated for four years in high school and went on to debate for CSU Fresno for a year. For the past two years I have been an assistant coach in policy and public forum.

General Debate is what you make it, run what you want. When you come into the round consider me a blank slate. The best arguments will when you the round with that being …

Speed I am a flow. Speed is not an issue as long as you are clear, if you are not clear I will yell clear. If your speaking doesn’t become clearer it will begin to affect your speaker points. For my own flow, which will only help you, slow down at the taglines and then speed up. Sign posting will do us both a lot of good. If you do spread be ready to defend your practice. I welcome arguments against spreading and won’t be afraid to pull the trigger on a speed k.

Framework Important to check serious abuse within the round, but it is not my favorite. If you run a critical affirmative, be ready to explain why you should be allowed to be untopical. Specifically on race affirmatives ground becomes an issue. The negative needs to explain that it is not the ground they lose but the ground the affirmative gains.

Kritiks K’s are welcome. Keep in mind that I may not be as well read as you are. A major pet peeve is when debates drop long complex phrases without explanation. I have a big problem with performative contradictions. If you tell me life doesn’t matter and we should all die, you probably shouldn’t be in this round. If you say we need to literally burn down the establishment and someone tosses you a lighter … Don’t have crazy complicated alternatives the alt needs to solve for the problems of the K. Reject alts are good with me, tell me why rejection is key. Link work needs to be strong. Throughout the debate tell me how they are actively linking through language and other things.

DA CP I love a good DA with a CP. Most DA’s are good just show your internal links.

Topicality You need to defend T. There is a side of me that really likes T arguments but you need to tell an abuse story. Running T as a time suck really annoys me.

A couple basic things
 * I don’t time flash; if it gets ridiculous you’ll see it in your speaker points. When you stop prep stop talking.
 * Time yourselves and each other
 * Don’t be rude, no matter how good you are losing because of rudeness is real a real factor