NSDA Champion Interview with Arel Rende (Part One)

Thank you for having me, I’m glad to be here.

Well, I started doing Lincoln Douglas on my team and my coach told me that two events were required. I picked DX over FX because I knew more about US Politics. My team on the Oklahoma circuit is the extemp school. We usually sweep the top three at locals, regionals, districts, and even sometimes state. So there was a good foundation for me to build on.

I started speaking my sophomore year, so it was right in the middle of the 2012 GOP primary. I didn’t actually give a practice speech before my first tournament. It was the week right after Rick Perry announced his campaign and I said that he had a shot at the nomination. It was in novice, lasted five minutes, had two sources, and I got ranked second in the round. So I guess it was solid for a first speech. I hadn’t given any speeches before my first tournament as practice and I actually had the event explained to me in draw before the round.

It was my first tournament! That novice tournament broke straight to finals and I ended up winning. I was actually upset about it because LD was still my priority event and I had lost in quarterfinals, so I wasn’t exactly graceful in victory. It’s amusing thinking about it now.

Brookings does a great job explaining complex issues in plain English, so that’s my favorite source to cite in draw. Outside of tournaments, I read every issue of Foreign Affairs. Those essays are great to establishing background info even if you can’t cite them in a speech. As for obscure sources, I don’t really have too many, but I do like The Small Wars Journal, The Urban Institute, The Peterson Institute of International Economics, Roll Call, Congressional Quarterly, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. All of those focus on one or two areas and provide great statistics and analysis.

Local papers need a greater presence in DX. When so many issues are state/local focused, knowing that perspective is key. Plus it just looks super impressive if you do it well.

The best question I drew was in Round 12 of NFLs 2013. It was “what changes should be made to the president’s ability to use executive power?” I had just finished Rachel Maddow’s “Drift” the week before and I was practically dancing back to my seat in draw. The worst was at my NFL district tournament in 2012 and the question was “what can Fox News do to boost ratings?”. I had one file on it and I accused Fox News of being a right-wing propaganda machine focused on the destruction of America. Its cringe-worthy looking back on it.

My sophomore year practice was almost nonexistent. Maybe two or three speeches a month outside of districts, states, and nats prep, where I would give three to four right before. My junior year I was giving a speech a week, but after a poor showing first semester, I gave a speech a day for a month. That was preparing for Harvard 2013 where I quartered, and that was how I improved so rapidly. This year I was on a two speech a week schedule. But I never forced it, at least 80% of the time I was the one initiating the practice speeches. And I rarely ever did drills myself outside of camp, just straight up speeches. My coaches would right me impossibly difficult questions, and constantly challenging myself was key.

There are two things that I was told that changed the way I extemped. The first was was drilled into my junior year and that was that simple speeches do better than complex ones. Your analysis can be on a doctoral level but it doesn’t matter if you can’t communicate it. Explaining everything in layman’s terms is key. The next piece came at camp in between my Junior and Senior years. It was that information should drive your analysis, not be your analysis. That really helped me delve deeper into topics and really make my analysis top notch.

My favorite comments are ones that say that I helped the judge understand a topic better. If that judge learned something from your speech that they didn’t previously know, first, you are probably going to get a good rank, and second, at that point you’re actually changing the political landscape through education. Most 17 year olds don’t have the opportunity to do that.

When I was a sophomore, my team had four really good extempers, all of whom placed highly at our state tournament and qualified for the national tournament. The thing was all of their styles were drastically different from one another. I didn’t model myself after them, but they ensured that I always held myself to a high standard. I didn’t really follow or even know about the national circuit until halfway through my junior year, so during my more formative moments I didn’t know anyone to model myself after.

This isn’t the answer you want, but I don’t think I could pick. This year there were so many great extempers on the circuit, all of whom are widely accomplished and have their own distinct style. They’re not only widely intelligent and charismatic, but they’re also great to be around and make up some of my best friends.

The Oklahoma circuit is small. Tournaments rarely have more than thirty entries in extemp, and we usually have one prelim break straight to finals. Sometimes there is a semifinal round. So tournaments don’t really give us the exposure or practice that a lot of bigger tournaments in Texas or Florida give competitors. Eastern Oklahoma has some very good extempers, we’ve broken at least two extempers at NSDAs/NFLs for the past three years. But the competition pool isn’t very deep just because there’s a small selection. Competing in Oklahoma really helped me at nationals because I was only rarely giving speeches to ‘extemp people’. Lay judges, parents, students, debaters, and interpers were common. That helped me develop what I think is a broad appeal among judges. Also it helped me reconcile some of my very liberal views and prevent bias from entering my speeches given to a regularly conservative crowd. Which when you have a massive judging pool like at NFLs, is important.