Tournaments Are The Greatest

October: The month in which CHSADKs panic about the impending tournament season and stress out over everything. Right now we are very concerned with finding evidence and writing cases and memorizing/actually writing speeches, We stress out about the news because who knows what whacko question we may get in extemp. We have nightmares about buying the wrong type of flow pen. Our printer has nervous breakdowns because of the excessive brief printing. We have a nervous breakdown because it's 9:30 Wednesday night and you have five pieces of evidence to find before midnight.

But let's slow down a minute. At this time of year, it's super easy to start stressing out about assignments and speech memorizing and case finding. Between everything we have to do to get ready for tournaments, we forget about the amazing things that come along with tournaments. This post is dedicated to that very subject.

1. Something to do on the weekends

Admittedly, I have pretty much no life outside speech and debate (deal with it Hans). Occasionally, we'll do something like frisbee or Main Event, but most times the weekend is spent filing extemp articles and researching some obscure case only one person in the country is running (forage fish, ft-dubz).

2. You see all your people

Despite having no life outside of speech and debate, I have plenty of friends. Unfortunately, not all of them are from my club. Not all of them are from my city. Not all of them are from my state. This means I see these people only at tournaments. This means that I over-react when I do see them and I may get a little... excited.

3. Talking to walls is normal

Under most circumstances, talking to walls is considered socially unacceptable. This changes at tournaments. You'll walk down a hallway and spot an interper making weird facial expressions and consistently shifting body positions, or a platformer reciting their lines with all the passion of a platformer. But they aren't giving their speeches to other competitors or parents. They are reciting their speech at the wall. After observing this occurrence, you proceed to turn towards a nearby corner and begin to give your speech, whatever it may be.

4. Awesome ballot parties commence

Admittedly, not all ballot parties are totally stupendously amazing. Occasionally, there will just be a bunch of debaters hanging around a hotel lobby saying unintelligible things that no one remember come the morning. But then there are the ballot parties that go down in history as ballot parties that changed ballot partying as we know it. (Okay, those don't happen very often.) Most times it's just a lot of fun to hang out with your friends without worrying about being on time to extemp prep.

5. Breaks

When doing postings at club, there are always a few people who try to start the forensic clap after every team name, myself included. We usually (always) get shut down. But during a breaks at a tournament, they can't shut us down. But the forensic clap isn't the only great part about breaks. I love watching people's reactions when they break, and I love hearing my friends names. Even if I can't sleep the night before because of all the nerves.

6. Blog post inspiration

After tournaments, I'm always overflowing with inspiration for blog posts and I have to restrain myself from posting five things in one day.  Thus, there is a post boom during tournament season. You're all welcome.

I could go on, but I'll hold back so you can get back to e-ring.

Vote affirmative, because you know how great tournaments are.