I've traveled with groups of teenagers to many an outing, school trip, or competition. One of the most important things I've learned about getting there with some mental margin and physical peace is to lay out a very deliberate approach plan. This is one that worked really well with a special group of six kids I traveled with one year. We set aside the ten days prior to our departure and we were deliberate about performing that day's tasks. Here's what the task list looked like:
No one really believes me when I tell them that the way to really move your speeches to the next level is to practice every single day. They believe that daily homework is the best way to move along in math. They believe that daily music practice is the best way to master technique. They believe that daily meals together are the best way to keep the family on the same page. They believe in daily hygiene, daily Bible reading, and daily chores. But they only bring their speeches out when the pressure is on to polish them up for competition….
So, what is it that happens in the “daily” approach that is so wonderful? It comes down to ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ type distinctions.
Post-season play is always exciting on a whole different level, isn’t it? There is the thrill of just being part of that playoff season, and there is much more at stake every time you take the field. If your sport is speech and debate, the same is true as you approach regionals….and there is a proper way to approach your post-season if our mission is truly to glorify God.
First of all, be glad. Wear the thrill of being there all over your face, and enjoy – really enjoy – the fact that you are there. Your Regional Invitational Championship is invitational – you’ve had to earn your way there. Don’t lose the weight of that! Don’t forget that you’ve competed well just to be there! While I never advocate gloating, I do think it’s important to recognize that attending the regional championship IS an accomplishment in itself. Many seasoned competitors forget that. They treat regionals as that next tournament on the way to Nationals, and frankly, if that is your mental attitude, you are making some big mistakes. Approaching Regionals in a manner that glorifies God means starting with “it is good” to be here! THIS is GOOD. Hold that thought. Dwell there.
Regionals is the end of your season with your regional friends. Most of our NCFCA regions kick off this last tournament by acknowledging their graduating seniors. There are always one or two who aren’t even there at the tournament. There are always a few who will be a tremendous loss of leadership to your region when they’ve moved on. Once the tournament is over, you may not see many of your speech or debate friends for months! So, recognize the closure that this tournament brings to the season. Soak up the time you have with these friends at this stage in your life. Make happy memories that you will look back to years from now. I promise, the funny moments from the student hangout will glow longer in your mind than any walk across the stage. The people you share this tournament with have helped you be there. They’ve sharpened and challenged and judged you to make you better. Be in it WITH them. Fellowship deeply and rejoice in the relationships you’ve built.
Regionals is also a tournament designed to reduce the competitive field. You can think of it as the ultimate semi-finals! Every round matters so much. One mistake I think many people make – both competitors AND parent judges – is to look beyond those rounds to the larger chess game of moving pieces – especially, I fear, on the debate side of the house. At this stage, I think the big-picture perspective can be harmful. All of us, parents and students alike, think we know who our “best” people are. We think we know who we should send to nationals, and we are sorely tempted to expect the pieces to fall just that way. But at Regional Championships, every round is its own battle. Every round must be approached, competed, and judged on its own merits. It must! If an underdog has worked and worked and arrived much improved, I want that weighed in. If a seasoned veteran is cavalier enough to think s/he can win on ethos alone, I beg to differ. Because the stakes are higher at regionals, there always seems to be a good bit of “clutching” on the part of BOTH students and parents at what are perceived to be “my” slots. We cannot approach this tournament this way if we are indeed trying to glorify God. All of the regional slots to nationals are up for grabs in every round. If you are looking at the whole chess board and who has to get where so this or that can happen over here, you lose sight of your mission in your own round. Speakers, you have to get all the small things together for every single presentation. Parents, you have to judge small things happening right here, today, in this round. We all have to shut out yesterday as well as tomorrow and be present in the NOW to compete with excellence at Regionals.
So, do we forget the big picture? No. AFTER the rounds are over, then we all must step back and take that larger perspective. Every year unexpected and wonderful things happen at regionals. They do! Every year there is that one surprise person who gets in there with a slot to nationals – the one nobody saw coming. There is both cheering and sneering in the wake of this: cheering on the part of a family who may be seeing real success for the first time, and sneering on the part of those who were “clutching” that slot earlier, claiming it as their own and feeling that they deserved it and it’s been unfairly snatched away from them. Approaching Regionals in a manner that glorifies God means being ready to be one of those who is cheering no matter who wins the slot. It means admitting that God knows what He purposes to do with all of your hard work from the season and all of the hard work of those other students too. It means – now that we know who has won slots – trusting that God knows what He is doing, even if judges don’t! Glorifying God here means really letting Him, not us, have the glory of this moment. THAT is exceedingly hard and our response will be impossible to camouflage or justify away with any amount of rhetoric. It will be painfully obvious whether you fall into the cheering or sneering camp!
And, every year at regionals, there are disappointments. There is an end of the road for the speech you DID work hard on that didn’t win a slot. There is bitter regret over the one mistake or the one thing you should have remembered. Those disappointments are going to sting for a while. If you are not feeling them, then I guarantee some of your friends are. And they hurt. They do. Be honest about that, but don’t be self-indulgent. Don’t wallow. Wait to see what your ballots said. Expect that God is doing something in your world that is bigger than this. It is very easy to see NCFCA as your whole world when you are staring at a loss at Regionals, or when you are ONE person below the line where the slots were given and you know it won’t roll down. It’s easy for me as a grown up to say, “let it go…buck up…see past this.” I am years beyond high school speech and debate! Some of my own children are years beyond high school speech and debate! There IS life, lots of it, beyond high school speech and debate! But I know too, that such words don’t soften or appease those disappointments. They actually hurt.
What I DO know is that being self-focused is not the way in which we glorify God. Not ever. As parents and as students we have a lot of our own persons at stake when it comes to Regionals. If we are truly going to approach it in a manner that glorifies God, let us relish the joy of being there, let us run with excellence every round we face, let us respect the providential results in a way that proves we are truly HIS and not our own.
Wishing you ALL well this season!
Perhaps you’ve seen the new Beauty and Beast film this year. I’m not going to lie; my daughter and I were GRIEVED that Dan Stevens had to be written out of Downton Abbey in order to take on the role of the Beast for this film, but he was perfect! In numerous interviews, he talks about how he had to fuse several technologies in order to get the full role of the Beast layered into the film, and it struck me that this triple-pass to building a character follows the way I often coach kids in building their interpretive characters.
I’m pretty sure that what keeps many a great speaker out of Illustrated Oratory is the boards! And even for kids who are artsy or who love this event, getting your boards in beautiful shape is no small feat. Here are a few tips to consider as you take on this challenge.
We’ve all heard that saying that “practice makes perfect,” right? And I think we all recognize a degree of truth there. But I also heard once from a good coaching friend that it’s really perfect practice that makes perfect. And that thought has stuck with me. That thought again: Perfect practice makes perfect. The important thing to understand is how to engage in perfect practice....
You know you have to say it. Out loud. The sources of your information….
And it is good and proper that we DO give credit where credit is due as we are giving speeches that inform, inspire, persuade, instruct, and generally educate your audience. In all fairness, one of the real academic benefits of preparing a platform speech is the research you learn how to do. You garner information from a variety of sources, learn from it, process it, and integrate it into your own paper – a blend of your ideas and words with those you’ve learned along the way (which by the way totally shaped your ideas, you know!)
I work with a lot of kids. I have worked with a lot of kids for a lot of years. And every year, everywhere, I meet kids – lots of them, including my own – who don’t want their parents to help with their speeches. Or watch their speeches at a tournament. Or look through the window of a closed door during a speech. Or read the script of their speeches. So, if YOU are one of the kids who feels this way, let me show you some perspective you may not have considered….
Open Interpretation - it’s an event in which competitors are always trying to second guess how to line themselves up in the competition room:
“No, I can’t go in with my humorous piece after you made the judges all cry!”
“Well I’m not going in after your funny piece and just depress them all either!”
It’s also one of the last events to get filled with judges:
“It’s just so…so…open.”
Let me tell you exactly why I love all that ‘openness’ in this event.
Interpretation is really about story telling at its most basic level, and stories run the full emotional gamut of things we feel as people. We love to laugh with good old belly laughs. We need to be moved at the deepest level to tears. But there is a LOT of space between those two extremes where most of us operate most of the time. The Open Interpretation strikes there, at that mid-zone along the emotional spectrum...
You’ve got a stack of ballots from your first tournament, and you KNOW you want to do better next time. So, how will those ballots help you improve? As you read through them, remember several things:
What do we stress very most about the night before a tournament? SCRIPT SUBMISSION! So….how do we avoid the rising blood pressure and temptation to throw the printer? Here are a few tips to smooth out the script process for you...
Does anyone remember Paul Harvey and “…the rest of the story?” For years Paul Harvey’s broadcast gave us a look at the inspiring accomplishments of ordinary people – who sometimes but not always turned out to be famous when we heard “the rest of the story.” This was biographical narrative at its best! Paul Harvey examined people. He looked at their challenges and motivations, but mostly he showed us how they chose deliberately to rise above the many various obstacles they faced to be doers of good deeds and to become men and women of real character, creativity, or accomplishment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.