From the point of view of the lowliest grassroots referee and a long-time forensics tournament director So I did a thing… a couple of months ago, I refereed a two-day soccer tournament.[1]You may wonder why I’m getting around to talking about it now. To be fair, I started writing this post at the tournament, but…
Read More What do forensics tournaments and soccer tournaments have in common?To members of administration and others: there are actually interesting academic discussions that take place on Facebook. A few days ago, I learned about one of them: tapered scoring in debate tournaments — particularly British Parliamentary Debate tournaments. In a nutshell, here’s the basic argument: all rounds don’t count equally when it comes to deciding…
Read More So I learned something (academically) new on Facebook: Tapered ScoringSo the following actually happened at a Vocal Viking tournament. One debater apparently couldn’t debate during round 3[1]Why? I still don’t know., so the debater’s partner debated “maverick” (in other words, by themself). Speechwire requires that each speaker receives at least 1 speaker point (that way, the program knows you didn’t accidentally forget to enter…
Read More Nerdy tab post: when is a team’s seeding not right?