Rodabough,+Madison

I debated for 3 year in high school at Bingham and this year will be my 3rd year coaching at Juan Diego.

T/Theory I think they should be argued like a disad. There should be an impact to your claim. Generally I default to competing interpretations. Theory needs an interp for me to vote for you. I also think the only theory argument that warrants rejecting the team is condo. If they say reject the argument not the team I will (given you are winning theory). That being said I have voted on this before. If they a: don't say reject the arg not the team and b: you spend a lot of time explaining why they should lose the debate because they read a certain argument. This would still take a lot of work for me to vote on. If you are going to go for theory v t you should still do an equal amount of work on both arguments (don't just go all in on theory and forget to answer T or vice versa). Please also make arguments as to why one precedes the other. Chances are if you don't I will default to T before theory, but I don't want to have to sort through which is more educational and all that jazz. It makes the debate more ambiguous and makes my decision a lot more based on my own beliefs. Also compare the education loss from not being topical to being theoretically unsound, or whatever standard you are going for. This will put you ahead in this debate.

CP/DA The more specific to the aff the better. I am generally not persuaded by generic links to the topic. I think a lot of time spent on a dropped defensive argument can make it a voter (ie - bottom of the docket). That being said a dropped argument doesn't lead to a win, it has to have a lot of time spent on it. If your CP is super specific to the aff and highly complex give an overview explaining how it solves and what it does.

K I know most general K ideas but I not well versed on specifics. Please explain the K and don't assume I know the complexities. To me I think the most important part of K debate is the link. I highly prefer specific links to the plan, especially over things like "you use the state and that's bad". I would especially prefer some kind of specific link in the 1nc.

Performance Debate/We Don't Read a Plan This isn't really my favorite kind of debate to watch. I think the ideas behind it can be kind of cool but I don't think I've ever seen one of these debates where the debate actually focused around the idea/performance that the team presents. By this I mean there is an interesting 1ac then the rest of the debate is very policy focused and the performance team doesn't use their performance or perform anymore. In these debates another thing that often bugs me is that teams are block relient. Grouping the DA can be beneficial, but make sure you are responding to the specificity of their arguments, especially when it comes to framework. A lot of critical teams have blocks to framework, that is cool, but please also do some line by line work and create some clash. Explain how your framework responds to their framework. Too many of these debates lack this aspect. I will also say that I do think if you aren't going to debate a plan text or advocacy statement you need a pretty good explanation why you can't defend anything. The argument, "you can do all of this performance or whatever and still defend some sort of advocacy" is pretty persuasive to me because I honestly can't think of a reason why having an advocacy statement would hurt you. Not even a plan text, just a "this is what we want formt the debate". Even a roll of the ballot claim in the 1ac/1nc is persuasive. But I think I do agree with the framework claims that you have to defend something is some way that is written/has some kind of text. If you aren't going to do that I am totally cool with it but answer the argument that you can still do all of your crazy non-traditional stuff and still defend something. I have yet to see someone answer this claim and I have probably watched 20 or more of these debates. Some sort of overview is also a really good idea. Just a quick "this is what we want to gain from this debate/this is our argument". I like this because honestly I feel a lot of the time the aim of the K is unclear. In general I also just think focusing on your advocacy statement or talking about how you change debate or what you get from it is highly important to get my ballot in these debates.

Things that will lose you speaker points There are a couple of things that I have seen often in debate that bug me as a judge. 1. Being rude in cross-x. I think there is a difference between having ethos and just being rude. Refusing to explain you K/ alt is rude. Ex: if the team asks you if you K is a competitiveness K don't respond by saying "sure, if that's what you think". Trying not to answer questions in cross-x just makes me think you don't understand your own argument or you think the only way you can win is by being shady. Rude debaters especially bug me when the other team clearly doesn't understand the argument or they have just made a huge mistake. We all know that they are behind, don't be rude. I will dock you speaker points a ton even if you are the best debater I've seen all day. 2. Time suck arguments/not making the smart decision. Everything you read in your 1nc should be a viable 2nr option. If you are going to go for a K that the 2ac spent 4 minutes on and kick T or a PIC that they dropped or severely undercover I am probably not going to give you stellar speaks. To me as a judge this says that you are too one sided of a debater to exploit all your options and stick with what you know rather than being smart. 3. Making my job harder. If there is an easy way for you to win the debate and that isn't the option you go for, causing my job to be harder I probably won't give you the best speaker points. Not to be confused with my previous statement, this is more referring to not seing that the other team has double turned themselves. EX I watched a debate recently where the neg when for dedev and on another flow claimed that the aff couldn't solve the economy and would probably trigger economic collapse. It would have been an easy decision for me if the aff had just concede that they couldn't solve the economy, thus they lead to dedev and then extended another advantage. Instead they went for that they did solve the economy and then tried to turn dedev. I had to call for cards and sort through a big mess and my decision could have been a lot easier. 4. Cross-x that goes nowhere. This is especially true when you have some really good moments that you don't exploit. Don't spend all of the 2ac cross-x asking about T and pushing them into a corner and then kick it in you next speech. That is a waste of 3 minutes to me and you aren't using your time wisely. On the reverse if you can use cross-x in a way that tears apart the other teams argument and then use that in your speech I will probably give you a litte boost int he speaker point department.