Thompson,+John

I believe Debate is a game to be won, and believe that you should be able to do whatever you can to win that game.

I debated for 4 years in High School (1 at Rancho Bernardo, 3 at Lone Peak) then assistant coached at Lone Peak for 4 years, where I am now the head coach.

In terms of argumentation and style, I'm fine with any style or idea, speed, straight up, critical, performance, etc. I like smart arguments and will vote on any argument. I evaluate based on argumentation, and have a very flexible framework of how I view each round. I like in depth debate, comparative analysis over fluff.

Kritiks: let's talk about them. I like them, and like the literature, but I don't like the way they are run in debate currently. I believe kritiks should be contextualized, even if it's just a general link, to the affirmative. This means the impacts and alternative explained in terms of the affirmative plan. Vague links, and links of omission I do not find very compelling.

Theory: offense defense mumbo jumbo, yeah I vaguely believe it. Certain things, however, just aren't compelling to judges. I recently listened to someone read author indicts and frame them as a theory argument that debate is "based on mutual trust and you should know that you're author is credible", that doesn't make an argument that is compelling as a reason to reject a team to me. I will not vote for it, it's near the level of dumbness of a time suck rvi on T. A way to make an argument compelling to me is specific explanations of gound loss and education loss.

If you ask me what my threshold for theory is without some specific question I will tell you "7"

The most important thing to me is being responsive to the other teams arguments, this means more then reading a card that has good warrants that is applicable, this means warrant analysis and explaining the reasons why some arguments are better. I believe that a lot of the debate that doesn't happen anymore is at the intersection of arguments, which is a place that I believe should be debated. If you can't figure out where that is, just stick to the generic line by line and focus on your impact calculus.