Tuesday at NFL Nationals in Alabama

The extemp speaking preparation room is an amazing scene

I thought that I would walk a lot less on Tuesday, but at the end of the day my pedometer said 6.5 miles.

Smoother start
People were more familiar with the sites of the competition, so it was easier for people to find rooms and arrive on time. Maps were not as important as they were, but it was still an issue so we just posted a few of them. One judge asked me where the gymnasium was and I referred her to the map. She told me that she had been unable to find the gym on the map. My thought was that if she could not find the huge gym on the map then perhaps she should not be judging at all, but we helped her find it. Some very disoriented people were helped by our volunteers to find where they were going.

Judge replacement continues
The high rate of judge replacement continued, but the judges who were assigned to the replacement pools showed up with amazing dependability. At Spain Park High School where I am there were NO no-shows in any of the replacement pools all day, so it was easy to replace the judges. At other sites, such as Oak Mountain High School, even this was not enough as one round there were so many replacements that all judges in the replacement pool were assigned.

Advancing after round six
The first six rounds are pre-paired randomly. After round six on Tuesday morning the scores were substituted. In individual events a top certain number advanced, while in debate those who had received a given number of ballots (8 out of 12) advanced. Public forum debate, for example, advanced 81 teams to this next level. In debate they start with new scores, but are eliminated after their second loss, so from now on its it two losses and out until the finals. This means that it is not clear how many rounds will be needed to get down to just two for the finals. In Lincoln Douglas debate a total of four students did not show up to their first debate in round 7. Those advancing are announced in an interesting ceremony, as the tab rooms make huge posters with the codes of the advancing students and then unroll them in one spot all at once to a gasping and screaming crowd. In previous years this has been a problem as the crowd has made it difficult to hang the huge posters up safely. This was solved this year by telling the students the unrolling would take place in the cafeteria and then actually hanging them in the gymnasium. It worked out well and the gasps were dramatic.

Touring the sites
Things at my site were running smoothly, so I did my usual and toured the various sites as I distributed the lists of those advancing to the various ombudsmen at the different sites. It was a hot day here but it was good to get out of the same school. The GPS in the rental car really came in handy, except for finding Briarwood School as I found that there are three of them in the area and I ended up going to one of the wrong ones. All of our sites are very beautiful schools, two of them quite huge and the other two being much smaller. The other sites is the Sheraton complex where student congress is taking place. At each site things seemed to be going well.

Software glitches
Dr. Rich Edwards of Baylor University has done a great job designing the most complex tabulation software program in the world for this event, and he regularly recodes and adjusts it as time goes on. There were some glitches, but he managed to correct the errors. Certain forms were not being printed properly and one incident of pairing two rounds at once or one round at a time surfaced, but he swooped in and fixed it. He puts a lot of pressure on himself to be perfect, which is understandable but seems a bit harsh to me, given the complexity of his task. The bottom line is that he always makes it work. I salute him. He is an amazing figure in global debate and speech.

Huge party
After the competitions on Tuesday there is a huge party held for those attending. With free food and entertainment, it is a great way for people to have some fun and to blow off steam. I did not go but the report was that it was a great event once again, with dancing, games, stage shows and more.

Reregistration for supplemental and consolation events
Students who are eliminated are invited to enter supplemental and consolation events that I listed previously. They have registered for them before the tournament starts, but they reregister at the party. A troop of tired tournament officials including a number from my team are there to handle this and to make sure that the entries are in the computer for the competition in these events that begins Wednesday. Even those eliminated in Wednesday can enter these events after they are out in their main entry. More on this process in my Wednesday report.

Things are going well and I am pleased even though my feet still hurt.