by Logan Scisco
Last month, Extemp Central gradually revealed the tournaments that would make up this year’s National Points Race. The only shakeup for tournaments was the decision to exclude the University of Pennsylvania’s Liberty Bell Classic from the National Points Race this season. The reasoning behind this was that the Liberty Bell Classic will run opposite of the California Invitational at Berkeley and the Harvard Invitational this season so its level of participation is in question.
Extempers also noticed when the tournaments were rolled out that the tier structure has been changed. Unlike last year, which featured only three tiers of tournaments, this year’s National Points Race will feature five tiers of competition. One of the criticisms that was mentioned about last year’s National Points Race are that smaller, more regional tournaments like the Wake Forest National Early Bird, the St. Mark’s Heart of Texas Invitational, and the California Invitational were worth the same amount of points as larger, more recognized tournaments like the Glenbrooks and Harvard. To reward extempers for their performance among larger fields, the tiers have been expanded so that the National Points Race can recognize the nation’s best extemper across a broad field of tournaments.
Last year was the first official year of the National Points Race, with Stacey Chen of North Allegheny Senior High School in Pennsylvania claiming the individual championship and claiming the National Team Points Race championship for her school. A picture of the trophies can be found at this website. If you count Becca Goldstein’s unofficial victory in 2008, when the points were used to give a snapshot of how the 2007-2008 season would have worked out, women have won the last two National Points Race titles. So this year will be interesting to see if any male extempers step up and wrest away the championship.
The only question that was not answered from last month’s rollout of the tournaments is how many points they were going to be worth. This is the question that this article will answer. The points system is set up to reward victories at major events, but also to reward top three finishes. During the season, even if there are defects, the points scale will not be changed. This is meant to provide fairness and uniformity to the season’s rankings. By the next edition of The Ex Files, which will be released prior to the Glenbrooks, three tournaments in the National Points Race will have been completed. Come back to Extemp Central after the Wake Forest National Early Bird, the Yale University Invitational, and St. Mark’s to find out what is going on in the National Points Race standings.
will kick off. The points race, whose purpose it is to award the extemper who has achieved the best results at a collection of nationally recognized tournaments, will see some adjustments from last season. For example, this year tournaments will be organized into five tiers as opposed to three.