by Logan Scisco

In just a month’s time, the National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) will host its national tournament and that will be followed a few weeks later by the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA – formerly National Forensic Association – NFL) National Tournament.  For many extempers, there is a lag time of a month or more between when their local circuit ceases competition and attending nationals.  This is a time when skills can erode if an extemper is not practicing or keeping up with national and international events.  Even extempers that are still competing on their local circuits into April risk burnout if not given enough time to mentally decompress and prepare for the challenge of competing against extempers from all parts of the United States at these national tournaments.

This strategy piece will discuss ways that extempers can adequately prepare for each national tournament.  I highly recommend extempers that have qualified to either competition to search Extemp Central for strategy pieces that have been written by past national champions and competitors as they will supplement the tips contained here.  The Internet is a great tool for acquiring a lot of advice on extemporaneous speaking and extempers should use it to their advantage as they prepare for Chicago and Overland Park this year.

Tip #1:  Know the Topic Areas and Practice Them

The first step that extempers attending NCFL and/or NSDA Nationals should take is looking up the topic areas that will be used at either tournament.  The NCFL’s national website has the topic areas for this year’s event and the NSDA National Tournament will release their topic areas for United States and International Extemp on May 1, 2014.  Although these topic areas often end up as very vague (e.g. “Latin America” or “The Obama Administration”), extempers can get an idea of what types of questions they will encounter at the tournament.  For NCFL Nationals, there are usually nine topic areas and before each round there is a random draw to determine what topic area is used.  Since there are nine topic areas and only eight rounds of competition, one of the topic areas will not be used.  For NSDA Nationals, there will be thirteen topic areas for United States and International Extemp.  The topic area that is usually the most vague (e.g. “Public Policy and Domestic Issues”) is typically the one selected for the final round, since that is a collection of domestic or international issues that extempers are asked to talk about.  Also, NSDA Nationals typically provides extempers a listing of what topic areas will appear in which rounds of the tournament when they arrive at the tournament site.  While this can be beneficial for extempers in knowing what topic area is coming next at the tournament, since they do not have this information ahead of time it is not necessarily beneficial for practices leading up to the tournament.

What I would highly recommend is for extempers to work with their coaches in acquiring the topic areas.  Your coach should then write three questions about each topic area and you should speak on each topic area in a practice session leading up to the tournament.  Yes, this does require you and your coach to put in a lot of effort, especially for NSDA Nationals when you will need to give at least thirteen practice speeches on various topics.  However, it does pay off and I am living proof of this.  As an example, prior to the 2003 NSDA National Tournament, my coach wrote topics for the “State and Local Issues” rounds and one of the questions we practiced on state economics is one of the questions I actually ended up drawing at the tournament.  By practicing each topic area you will lessen some of your anxiety about the questions you might receive in each round and you will also learn where your weaknesses are in discussing the topic.  For example, if you are giving a speech about Venezuela and find that you don’t know a lot about the country, this can prompt you to look up information and read more about it.

Tip #2:  Assess Your File Boxes

Since the NCFL National Tournament is in May and the NSDA Tournament is in June, you need to go through your files and purge outdated information and acquire new information about each topic area.  I would highly recommend going through each file and seeing if you have enough information for the tournament or not.  While this is tough to assess, especially in terms of more recent events like the Ukraine or the Affordable Care Act that continue to acquire a lot of media attention, you do want to become reacquainted with your files and what files are strong and weak.  Use the topic areas provided by each tournament to examine whether or not a file is up to standard.  For example, it is pretty much a given that the NSDA Tournament will require you to talk about Latin America if you are doing International Extemp.  If your file on any Latin American country is deficient, then I would highly suggest that you make a concerted effort to strengthen files about that country and others.  Also, try to enlist other teammates to help you do this, especially if you are the only extempers from your school that qualified to nationals.  An exercise like this can promote team unity and also help younger extempers realize the steps they need to take to one day compete on the national level.

Understanding what is in your files also has the benefit of letting you evaluate what questions to pick at the tournament.  If you are in quarterfinals and draw questions on Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil and you know that your files do not have adequate information on Argentina and Uruguay, then you know it is wiser to select the Brazil question.  Nothing is worse than seeing an extemper pick a topic and then get back to their files and realize that they do not have enough information to answer the question.

Topic #3:  Speak in Front of Different Size Audiences and Rooms

If your practices typically consist of going to your coach’s room and only practicing in front of him or her then you need to change this up before nationals.  Each of your CFL Nationals prelims will feature three judges, as will all of your outrounds until you hit the final round that features five judges.  Each of your NSDA Nationals prelims will feature two judges, with three judges serving on your octofinal and quarterfinal panels, five judges on your semifinal panels, and then thirteen judges on your final round panel.  Preliminary rounds will usually take place in a small classroom, but your later elimination rounds might be in a larger hotel convention room or larger room to acquire a big audience.  Therefore, you and your coach should practice in different sized rooms in the school, both large and small.  If your school has a large auditorium, I highly suggest practicing at least one speech in there to simulate the experience of giving a speech on a stage.  My high school typically featured a showcase of national qualifiers at the end of the season and this allowed me to speak on a stage, in front of blinding lights, and about fifty to seventy people.  As a result, I was more than prepared in 2003 to speak in the final round because I had experiences in this area.

Since you are going to get multiple judges in your prelims and elimination rounds, you need to practice having multiple people watch your speeches.  This can be another coach, a random community person, a teammate, etc.  They are not necessarily there to provide feedback (although they probably will and their feedback can be just as valid as your coach’s because community judges are used at both tournaments), but instead to provide a warm body that you can shift your eye contact to at various points.  One of the biggest mistakes extempers make when they have multiple judge panels is that they concentrate most of their eye contact on one judge or quickly shift their eye contact to everyone and never make a special connection with anyone.  I highly recommend extempers use the “one idea, one person” method of eye contact whereby you finish a sentence or two by looking exclusively at one audience member before moving to someone else.  This will help you bring someone into your speech for those sentences and it helps you avoid the “panicky shifting of your eyes to everyone in the room” moment that defines some speakers.  If you can get other people to come in and watch your practices so that you have five to ten people watching at once that is also beneficial.  This doesn’t need to happen all of the time, but you should aim to have this happen at least once or twice.

The goal of making these adjustments in rooms and number of people watching your speech is for you to become more comfortable speaking in different settings and people who are not your coach.  If you only practice with your coach in one room then you become too comfortable with that setting and when you have to speak in front of others or different rooms it can throw you.  Since extempers usually do not have a large number of people watching their speeches, when they suddenly have more than twenty people watching them speak in an elimination round it can be of a great shock to them.  By practicing in different settings and different audience sizes, you can build up your confidence of being able to handle these different settings.

Tip #4:  Adopt a “Nationals Mindset” for Your Practices

My biggest pet peeve as a coach is to try to make my students practice as if they are giving speeches for the national tournament.  This means that when they are doing their prep work that they should not be taking phone calls, playing on their cell phone, or talking with friends who might be trying to disrupt them.  Instead, they should prepare like they would at nationals by remaining silent to those around them, ignore distractions, and trash their speech outline before going to their competition rooms (which is standard practice at these national tournaments).  Practices should not become so casual that they are just something that you do so that you can stay on the team or do before you can head home for dinner and do homework.  Practices should mirror national tournament conditions as much as possible (which is why I recommend changing rooms and sizes of audiences).

Also, you should practice cross-examination strategies with your coach.  Cross-examination does not happen at CFL Nationals, but it does take place in NSDA semi-finals and finals.  The time limit for NSDA cross-examination is two minutes, so you should have a fellow competitor question your speeches a few times when you prepare to go to the national tournament.  If another extempers from your school qualified, you should also practice questioning them.  Cross-examination can be stressful for those who have never had to do it before nationals.  With more national circuit tournaments adopting it in recent years it is not as big of an issue as it used to be, but if you are a competitor who does not travel the national circuit and you have no cross-examination experience, then you need to practice it a few times before nationals.  After all, you do not want to make semi-finals and then fail to advance because you were completely new to cross-examination practices.

Tip #5:  Have Fun!

It is easy to get stressed out about the national tournament, especially if it is your first time attending and/or you are going into the tournament with expectations that you are going to advance deep and possibly win.  If you are going for the first time, you will be in for a small shock when you go into the prep room and there are over 100 competitors there.  However, keep in mind that you are only going to hit about twenty-four of those competitors in your preliminary rounds, so you do not need to worry about beating everyone.  If you are going in with high expectations, you should make yourself aware that crazy things happen at tournaments with bad draws, bad judges, and just bad breaks.  There are a lot of great extempers that have “underperformed” at nationals in the past, so it is a possibility.  However, you should relish the fact that you have the honor of representing your diocese or district at one of these national tournaments and should make it a point to enjoy each of your rounds.  If you throw everything you have into your practices before the national tournaments, I can guarantee that you will feel accomplished regardless of what the final results of the tournament shows.  Just enjoy the seven minutes you have each round and remember that the extempers who wins is not always the one with the most information, but the one who educates their audience about the topic and engages them.

Good luck!