I'm sitting here at the Tournament of Champions, and all in all, it's been a good day for Team Dennis. I have very good friends that are for the first time tasting the fruits of the outrounds of the TOC, and for them I am very happy. My girlfriend and her team WON their division of the Tournament of Champions, a feat any coach would love to achieve (like winning a WSOP bracelet, except they give away 40+ of those a year, and you can lose and enter another later, not really an option at the TOC), and so she is on cloud nine, and well she should be. But being here reminds me, in no uncertain terms, that our success on this field requires an above and beyond experience, and even with such, it's not a guarantee....
...it's not that I want it to be easy, not at all. the experience of the TOC, or anything that really fucking matters, should be hard. it should be something that seems unattainable. the key word is seems. it needs to seem unattainable, but you actually need to have an access point. you need to be able to put in the work, and when you do, you need to have a legitimate chance at success, and most of the time at this tournament, i don't feel that chance exists. I evaluate the TOC as an experience not very different from the NCAA basketball tornament. it's a qualification process, which if you qualify at the given tournaments, you are allowed to go. This means that your big teams are always going to qualify, your Duke, your Kansas, your UCLA and there will always be a lagre group of teams that will qualify consistently but more sporatically, your Creightons, your George Masons, your Miami Ohios. Finally there are teams that qualify, but its rare for them, and they get to attend the tourmenent not because they're among the best, but because their qualification process was easier. these are your sam houston states, your moorhead states, your IUPUI's. as of right now, we're in the bottom catagory, where we should be happy to merely attend the tournament, and any success we have should be just gravy. I hate that. the program i took over had a almost uncomfortable phobia with winning when i was hired, and it seemed they were always afraid to put themselves out, for the fear of failure. It took years for the students to assume i had their best interest at heart, and to get them to fully buy in. the kids believe in what we're trying to do, and now they have expectations of success, and great degrees of success based on those expectations....
...and i should preface this discussion with this fact- i know what it takes to make a splash at the TOC, and it's a relatively simple formula. Debates. Lots and lots of debates. Getting these debates, even if you don't win those debates, is huge toward the success and growth of your program. It gives teams an opportunity to see you debate and figure out your strenghts and weaknesses. it gives your debaters a chance to compete against the best, to get to use the top of the activity as a measuring stick, and find out where they stand...at one point this weekend, i was talking to one of my students, who was in the doldrums (if you miss the reference, please read Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, a wonderful kids books that kids probably miss the true point, like The Adventures of Alice and Wonderland) about her experience, and she even began questioning why she came and why she should continue...and i talked to her relatively extensively, but in retrospect, i feel like i was dishonest with her...
...not with the crux of what i talked about, that her love for the activity, and all that she's given to the activity, she should not allow, and i will not allow her, to let her worth as a person or as a debater should have nothing to do with the experience, that this is a really hard experience, and that she would be being dishonest with herself if she thought she'd have been happier if she had stayed home, having not qualified. i wanted her to remember the schools like James Logan, kids who if i could have afforded to just pay for them to go myself (and absent paying for a funeral, i really considered doing anyway) but were unable to go, based on monetary concerns. I wanted her to remember how she felt at Gonzaga, when they lost a bid debate and began having legitimate concerns for whether they would meet their goal of attending the TOC. and this is where i feel like i did my kids a dis-service...
...rather than being honest with them, and telling them we probably weren't good enough to go, and if we did go, not good enough to not take a beating, i looked at those kids, saw the want in their eyes, and decided, at that moment, i would get them to the TOC, even though i knew, knew, knew, we couldn't do well. Knew we were a year away from being ready. Knew my kids were in for a beating, and i did nothing to stop it, and invariably, sent them to fight the lions with meat products in their pockets. At the beginning of the year, when i make my yearly predictions and goals, the goal for the year was three TOC bids, as a team. I didn't imagine, in my heart of hearts, they would ever qualify...until i decided to have them qualify. It may sound arrogant, that i just decided to have them qualify and then they did, and for that arrogance, i apologize, but it does not change the facts. in retrospect, we would not have, could not have, qualified for the TOC without a decided effort to do so. At the time, i looked at the overall viability of the program, and recognized the overall benefit to the program....that everyone has to come and get that ass taken a little...that you have to see what measuring stick is and where it is to know what you have to do....that it's merely an honor to qualify and we should be happy just to go...forgetting that i was taking a senior, a senior that had given it ALL to the program. a kid who i know i should have protected, would have to be the person that carried the weight for this experience (the junior is a guy that has debated for me, thus his skin is thicker, but sometimes i forget he has feelings as well...note to self...). i did not consider her feelings at all. if i had, i probabaly would have taken a different course of action, even if it was only to truly inform them of the situation. at least then, she wouldn't have been surprised, and could have braced herself for it...it makes me re-evaluate why we do this...it seems to make us lose focus of the bigger things, and for me, that's the overall growth, mental, psychological and spiritual growth of my kids...and i feel i did my kid a dis-service bringing her here, even though she wanted to come, and it was her desire to come that motivated me to make sure they got to experience the TOC....
sorry, kid. i owe you.
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