McFarland,+Ryan

Ryan McFarland

Debated at KCKCC and Wichita State Two years of coaching at Wichita State, 3 years at Hutchinson High School in Kansas, one year of assistant coaching at Kapaun Mt. Carmel HS, and now head coach at KMC.

General things:

Clipping cards is cheating and a reason you should lose the debate. If I catch you clipping I will vote against you even if the other team doesn’t call it out. I don’t like the new trend in debate where a person reads giant blocks of texts while giving the judge little pen time between arguments. This is almost impossible to flow and I’m likely missing important arguments. If this is the way you prefer to do line-by-line, it would be best to not pref me or change how you present arguments to me.

Topicality - the topic is important. I am open, and have voted for non-topical K affirmatives in the past but I mostly lean negative on questions of topicality against those types of affirmatives. I’ve realized when I vote negative on framework or topicality against K affirmatives it’s because the aff didn’t deal with the “topical version of the aff” arguments very well. I am generally not persuaded by arguments that topicality is genocide or some equivalent argument. I am also not persuaded by arguments about a team’s strategic decision to flip negative.

Disads/Case - I enjoy these debates a lot. Defense is cool and underutilized. Impact turns are also pretty cool. I'm willing to assign 0% risk if either team wins substantial defense.

Counterplans - read them. I like tricky PICs.

Kritiks - I went for them a lot during my debate career. This is not because I have an interest in the argument, but it was a strategic choice for me. So, don’t assume I know the jargon of your K author. Impact claims should be more than “root cause of violence” and the alternative should be well explained.

Theory - may be a reason to reject the team, or just the argument.

Performance/K affs - read them. I think these arguments are just as valuable than any other argument in debate. Explain to me what voting aff means. What does voting aff mean for you, the debate community, or society writ large? Read the topicality section above.