Stacey Chen competed for North Allegheny High School in Wexford, Pennsylvania. She was last year’s NFL national champion in International extemp and was the first receipient of the Extemp Central National Points award after winning Glenbrooks, the George Mason University Patriot Games Extemp Round Robin, Harvard, and the Extemporaneous Speaking Tournament of Champions. Stacey now attends Yale University and is a contributor for Extemp Central. She shares her thoughts on the NFL National tournament in this article for Extemp Central readers.
Category: Tournaments
by Stacey Chen
The Glenbrooks is one of the largest tournaments of the year in both speech and debate events, as well as one of the most fun! Extemp at Glenbrooks generally contains a fairly large and diverse pool of extempers from across the country. It is also “mixed” extemp, which may be different for extempers who come from districts that regularly split between “domestic” and “international” extemp. Although the size and quality of the field, as well as a possible switch to combined extemp, can be intimidating, there are a few things you can do to prepare well for the tournament and enjoy the experience rather than stressing out.
Preparation for the Glenbrooks was pretty standard for me because my district did not split between USX and IX. The rounds at Glenbrooks alternate between foreign and domestic topic areas, so it is important to prepare for both types of questions equally. Be sure to read and file articles from major publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, etc as usual. Many questions will be drawn from the headlines of these papers in the few weeks leading up to the tournament. On the domestic front, it is also useful to find smaller regional papers for more specific issues (e.g. The Denver Post, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, etc). For international issues, also try to include source diversity with articles from news sources like Der Spiegel, AllAfrica.com, The South China Morning Post, The Council on Foreign Relations, etc. These publications should give you a solid base of background knowledge and recent events; for more advanced extempers, delving into journals ranging from Foreign Affairs to Current History to The Washington Quarterly will provide you with a deeper theoretical knowledge for analysis. If you are just beginning to extemp or do not have enough time to devote to searching for journal articles, however, it may be much more beneficial to focus on covering major newspapers first. Although it is always helpful to have detailed and specific articles, do not waste time on obscure happenings in, say, Moldova, when you could be bolstering your Iran file.
By Max Webster[1]
After a summer of camps, workshops, practice speeches, and filing, it’s finally time to shake off the rust, hop back into your suit, and begin the ‘09/’10 season with the first tournament of the year: The Wake Forest National Earlybird. Wake was always my first tournament every year, and I can honestly say that it was one of my favorites. It’s well run, competitive, and located in a great college town. But like any tournament, there is much to Wake beneath the surface, which years of attendance and talking to former competitors will help you to uncover. I hope to provide some of that insight for you. I will share some of the quirks, secrets, and tricks of the tournament that I learned during my years at the Earlybird to help you maximize your potential for success and get the most out of what should be an enjoyable event for everyone. Many of the strategies and concepts I will discuss are also applicable to just about any tournament you attend, so you can use this article as a guide to aid in your preparations for other upcoming competitions as well.
The most important aspect of any tournament is your pre-tournament preparation. The weeks before a tournament that you spend getting your files in order and doing practice rounds with teammates or coaches are the best indicator of what kind of a tournament you’ll have. I truly believe that practice makes perfect and the work you put into extemp well before it’s show-time will pay off in big rounds when you can tackle an obscure question with ease or put a thoughtful and unique spin on a more commonplace question that will keep your judges attention throughout the round and land you the one. This mantra of hard work and preparation is particularly applicable to Wake Forest. During the much-needed summer respite from school, there is usually no coach or judicious teammate pressuring you to file and speak. But if you have been doing that work on your own, then it will certainly show at this tournament more than any other where you will have a huge leg-up on your competition.
Even if you haven’t had time to work a tremendous amount on extemp over the summer – don’t panic. You still have two weeks to put your preparation into over-drive.
By: Mark Royce[1]
The National Forensic League annual tournament is the largest, most prestigious, and most competitive high school speech and debate contest, as well as one of the greatest exhibitions of oratorical talent in the English-speaking world. About two hundred competitors from across the country enter in one of the nine main events, and an epic sequence of elimination rounds over the course of an entire week determines the chosen few who shall perform in front of a sizable audience. No other forensics tournament, the gilded podiums of the national circuit included, attracts the same measure of talent or bestows the same glory on its victors. This year’s tournament will be held June 14-19 in Birmingham, Alabama.
Nationals is the hardest tournament, and this article is concerned specifically with the hardest event, Extemporaneous Speaking. I write on the assumption that the reader is familiar with the format and terminology of extemp, and therefore we may concentrate our attention upon what is unique to the Nationals experience. Categorization being prominent among the skills of extempers, past or present, I shall divide my composition into two main parts, the first providing a chronological guide to the ins and outs of the tournament, and the second disclosing a somewhat secret formula for constructing speeches based on the Nationals topic areas.
The NFL national tournament is where extemp legends are made. With a format of thirteen rounds, two differentiated forms of extemp, three rounds of cross examination, a final round that takes place in front of hundreds of people, and $6,000 in scholarship money going to the winner, NFL is an experience unlike any other.
To provide a preview for this tournament, Extemp Central has brought together three national finalists to discuss their preparation for the tournament and the work that had to be done in the trenches to get them onto the national final stage.
By Omar Qureshi[1]
Nowhere will you find a bunch of 250 extempers more competitive than at the NFL National Tournament. There is not a competition that matches its size, depth, or prestige.
With emotions running high, there is no better piece of advice than to just relax. Regardless of how many people are there, the goal is still very much the same: to give the best extemp speech you can give every round. It is prudent to consider the tournament as something outside of you. It exists outside of your paper, pens, boxes, and the prep room. From the time you pick your topic to the time you give your speech, all that exists is the event. In that zone nothing else matters. It matters not how good the speeches were in your room. It matters only that yours is a dedicated reflection of your ability as an extemper.
The Montgomery Bell Extemp Round Robin is a unique experience for those extempers who have attended it. For the participants that are getting ready to compete, as well as those extempers who one day aspire to compete in the tournament, The Ex Files has assembled a panel discussion of four extempers who have competed at the tournament over the last several years, including one overall tournament champion, David Tannenwald. This panel discusses their experiences at the tournament in the hope that competitors can learn more about how the tournament works, what they should expect in Nashville in a few weeks, and advice to extempers who won day hope to receive an MBA bid.
Interview by Logan Scisco
The Montgomery Bell Extemp Round Robin is a tournament that has occurred since 1999 and has featured the best extemporaneous speaking competitors the nation has ever seen. The list of participants over the years includes six CFL national champions, ten NFL national champions, and twelve NFL final round national champions. While the tournament is prestigious, it has often been shrouded by misconceptions about how it evolved and how its participants are selected.
Adam Johnson, a former extemporaneous speaking competitor for Montgomery Bell Academy and who has run the Round Robin for nearly a decade, was nice enough to sit down with Logan Scisco for this exclusive interview to clarify the misconceptions that has existed over the years about the Round Robin and to provide his insight into current trends in the extemporaneous speaking community.
by Ian Panchevre
A typical prep room experience does not involve recognizing someone from the nationals final round video. At the Glenbrooks, however, this sort of encounter is typical. The Glenbrooks can be an intimidating tournament. But you will learn that the excitement of the tournament can easily overcome most apprehension. The Glenbrooks offers an incredible learning opportunity and I hope to share with you what I got out of it, but in order to do so, I’ll have to break the spirit of extemp. Instead of covering three distinct points, I will begin by addressing the sort of preparation I did and then precede to reveal the attitude that I had throughout the tournament. In the process, I hope to address specifics about the tournament.
While preparing, it is important to keep in mind what really matters. You have a limited amount of time and therefore you have to be selective in regards to how you devote yourself.
Reading is obviously important. I encourage extempers to increase their reading load before a tournament such as the Glenbrooks. However, be realistic about how much you can read and what sort of knowledge will be useful in rounds. Reading a journal article about the fishing industry in Fiji will have little applicability. Moreover, trying to go through an entire book is probably unrealistic. In addition to regularly reading The Economist and Foreign Affairs, I would read the entire domestic and foreign section of The New York Times for about a week and a half before a big tournament. Also, while filing, I would set aside articles that clarified situations I did not completely understand to read at a later time. If you have the time to read a journal, go for it. Otherwise, stick with more general news.
By Sarah Anand[1]
The St. Marks tournament in Dallas, Texas was unlike a lot of national tournaments I have been to. For starters, it was in the hotel I was staying at, making it truly a bizarre and great experience to take the elevator down to the prep room in the main lobby. But for reasons that did not have to do with the surroundings, St. Marks is also unique because it allows the competitor (if he or she wishes) to double enter in ISX and USX. By the end of the second day, a person who makes it to finals in both fields would have had the opportunity to speak twelve times (six preliminary rounds, six out rounds). With more rounds competed in one day than any day at Nationals, an extemper might be thinking, “How exactly do I keep my sanity and still give a great speech by the end of the day?” For me, preparation for this tournament was not too different than what I normally would do. However, because it was towards the beginning of the season, I did have to make sure my focus was as consistent as it could be.