Ball,+Ian

I debated for four years in high school at the University School of Nashville in Tennessee. I went to the TOC in 2009 and 2010. I am coaching USN at the beginning of the 2011-2012 season. I am a sophomore at Stanford University, but I do not debate policy in college.

If you can articulate a compelling reason as to why I should vote for you, I can vote on virtually any argument. That being said, I would prefer a policy round and as a judge I default to a policymaker unless I am told otherwise. I have definitely voted on K's, but for me it is very important that you articulate why the Kritik is a reason to vote for you. If I am no longer a policymaker, I think you should explicitly define the role of the ballot. I also think the alternative should be clearly defined and preferably have a text. I do not think the neg should be able to reformulate their alternative every speech in response to affirmative arguments.

I was a 2N in high school, and I think that affects my views on theory. I would say that I am pretty neg leaning on theory questions, with the exception of process counterplans and state funding counterplans as well as what I said above about Kritiks. On theory, it is important to do comparative impact analysis just as you would on a DA, explaining why one standard turns or outweighs another standard. If you win that, I will definitely vote on theory.

I went for T a lot and I really like it. I think the affirmative needs to say more than "default to resonability; competing interpretations cause a race to the bottom" to gain traction on reasonability. I don't really consider those words alone to be an argument. However, if reasonability is well developed, I will definitely vote on it.

I like traditional counter plan/net benefit debates. On DA's, it is important to make //comparative// impact analysis. I really like turns case arguments. They precede most other impact analysis arguments.

Above all, just have fun. I see debate as a game and as a competitive activity. I think it's fine to get heated and aggressive about the arguments in the round, but try not to descend to personal attacks. If you are constantly arrogant and rude, it will probably hurt your speaker points.

In terms of speaker points, I place a very high priority on line by line debating. I don't like it when teams, especially paperless teams, don't flow and simply read long prewritten overviews at the top of every flow before going to the line by line and just cross applying from the overview. This will definitely hurt your speaker points and it makes me less likely to do the work for you to organize your arguments to see which of them respond to the other team's.

I assign a lot of weight to smart analytical arguments. I don't think saying "they just make an analytical and our card answers that" is a sufficient response to a truly smart analytical argument. In front of me, you will probably be better served by sacrificing some speed for organization, that is, by being careful to follow the line by line even if you have to get off your blocks and go a little bit slower. I don't really have a problem with very quick, very clear debaters. It's hard to flow when pretty slow debaters move to overviews and get really fast and unclear and then go back to the line by line and slow down again.