Marxer,+Matt

In high school, I debated for Byron Nelson High School primarily in Lincoln Douglas Debate and Public Forum Debate. My Junior year I was 2nd place in 4A UIL LD State, and Senior year, I was the 4A LD State Champion. I also placed 6th place at NFL Nationals in Public Forum Debate in 2012. After graduating high school, I debated for one year in parliamentary debate at Texas Tech University. In the 2013-2014 school year, I worked with the Byron Nelson High School speech and debate team as a contracted assistant coach primarily focusing on LD. I currently am working as an assistant to the Argyle High School Debate team, working with students in LD, Policy, and PF.

Now for each specific event:

__Policy__:

While I never debated policy in high school, as I mentioned above, I did compete in Parliamentary Debate at Texas Tech University. I have since helped coach policy and have judged it often.
 * Speed: As long as you are speaking clearly. If you are being unclear in the round, I will say "Clear" no more than three times, after which, I will stop flowing, so make sure that you heed my advice if I do tell you to speak more clearly. Make sure that you read plan/CP texts slowly or twice, also please read all tags and authors clearly so you can make sure I pick up on them.


 * Ks: I'm really not a huge fan of Ks on either the aff or the neg, but that doesn't mean I won't vote for one. Please just make sure that everything is explained clearly. I am not an expert in critical theory so again it is imperative you explain this argument clearly.


 * CPs: Perfectly fine with CPs on the neg, just make sure it is well fleshed out.


 * Topicality: I will occasionally vote on T as long as you can prove that there is legitimate abuse coming off of it. I will not intervene though, so if a team is running an abusive argument and the other side doesn't call it out, I will still evaluate the argument.


 * DAs: Again, no problems here. In both DAs and CPs, I tend to vote for whichever advocacy has the most net bens. I also believe that offense is the best way to win a round, but defensive arguments are incredibly important too.


 * If you are reading a plan or counter plan text, PLEASE read it out loud TWICE. It's very important that I can get down the plan text as a judge, and oftentimes debaters read through it so quickly I can't properly get it down.


 * In another note, I am not really a fan of performance affs, but if you thoroughly justify your position, I am not opposed to voting for it.

__LD:__

LD is the debate event that I first debated in high school, and the event in which I have the most overall experience.
 * Speed: Just like in policy, I don't have any problems with keeping up with speed, however, I do not believe that you should full on spread in Lincoln Douglas Debate. If you are unclear, I will say "Clear" three times, and after that I will stop flowing, and your speaker points will be docked a lot. Make sure that you read all taglines and pieces of evidence or authors that you have clearly so you can make sure that I have them down.


 * Framework: I am definitely not a fan of kritiks in LD. I believe that you should have some sort of standard and a weighing mechanism to uphold it on both aff and neg. Whether this is the traditional V/C or something else, you do need to have a standard of some sort.


 * Philosophy vs empirical data: I don't really mind whether you make this a debate over philosophy or empirics, I am okay with either. However, given the background behind LD and its intended purpose, if it comes down to a relatively even debate with one side arguing the philosophical side and the other nearly entirely evidence based, I will probably err on the side of the philosophical.


 * In terms of arguments about topicality/abuse, I don't care if they are structured like in policy or not. As long as you can prove to me that an argument is unfair or abusive, and tell me why this is important, I will evaluate it. In LD though, a single argument over something being unfair is probably not going to be enough for you to get my vote.


 * I can not stress to you how important it is that you give good, solid impacts to your arguments. One of the biggest annoyances I have as a judge is debates with little impacts coming off of either side. This makes it so that I have to heavily intervene in the round to decide a winner, which is something I do not like to do. In the final speeches, I also believe that arguments should be condensed down and focused on what is most important in the round. In the NR, you do need to cover most of the flow, but you also should leave time at the end to give well impacted, overarching voting reasons for why you have clearly won the debate. In the 2AR, I fully believe that you should spend the entire time on a few key, major arguments in the round, and again, impact them well and tell me why they are important. You do not need to cover the whole flow in the 2AR, and doing so will probably make it a very sloppy speech with few well impacted arguments.