Spring Coaches Meeting

Lewiston High School, 156 East Avenue, Lewiston
May 6, 2016

8:30 Breakfast and general talking

8:55  Welcome and Introductions

Pat Spelecki (Lewiston HS), Matt Kneeland (Greely HS), Brian Dodge (Deering HS) Matt Leland (Lincoln Academy), Joe Pelletier (Bangor HS), David Arenstam (Thornton Academy), Ben Grasso (Thornton Academy), Kris Deveau (Brunswick HS), Michele Adams (York HS), Amy Trask (Bangor HS), Lyndsy Denk (Falmouth HS), Jason Curry (Greely HS), Dan Haskell (Chevrus HS), Lisa Melanson (Cape Elizabeth HS), D’Arcy Robinson (Poland Regional HS)

Vote on Parliamentarian for the meeting: Jason Curry (unanimously)

9:00 Officers’ Reports

Secretary (D’Arcy Robinson, Poland Regional HS)

Approval of the fall minutes (table). Passed

Good season overall

Treasurer (Kris Deveau, Brunswick HS)

Budget report handout. This is a draft. Expenses in line with income.

Spears trust fund contacted Kris about the trust—money now in the trust and they are interested in knowing if we want to be involved.

Approval of the treasurer’s report (Approved unanimously)

Vice-president (Jason Curry, Greely HS)

Minimal contact with the MPA-no representation at the state finals.

Since Curry is stepping down he clarified the duties of the VP is supervising Council of Nine: Not to be a mouthpiece for the coaches, rather a conduit for the students’ concerns.

Report approved unanimously.

President (Matt Leland, Lincoln Academy)

State of the League report/new schools:

Several new schools have joined.

• Berwick
• Richmond
• Hebron
• Windham*
• Bidderford*
• Medomak HS

Possibilities:

• Lisbon
• Rockland
• Brewer
• Old Town
• Nokomis
• Monmouth
• Oxford Hills
• St. Dom’s
• Telstar
• Gould Academy

Let Matt know if you could be a point of contact for new schools.

Email decorum

Learn how to communicate via email in a more appropriate manner. Consider what you wish to communicate and use personal email if there is an issue with another coach  and don’t use the list serve as a forum for criticism and critique—be aware that the list serve is a very public place.

Refer to honor code of conduct and please be conscious of tone.

President should not be a target for venting concerns.

Should there be consequences for repeat offenders?

State Tournament

State tournament went on with little problems.

Approved President report unanimously.

10 minute break

9:30  Moderator’s Reports

Speech Moderator’s Report (Pat Spilecki, Lewiston HS)

Speech this year has increased.  The number of students and schools participating has grown.  This is a good sign.  The Maine Forensics Association should encourage schools nearby to join and participate.

Due to several incidences during tournaments of copying performances from those pieces posted on the internet, coaches should review the following from the Maine Forensics Association Guidelines with their competitors.

Honesty:

Offenses include but are not restricted to:

• Theft of intellectual materials or plagiarism.
• Theft or unauthorized use of others’ property.
• Unauthorized operation of computer (or similar device), password or account of another user.
• Unauthorized searching on the computer (or similar device)

Judges and judges’ training seem to becoming more of an issue.  With the growing numbers of students entering speech categories, and parent/judges or judges in general are in need of more consistent training(s).  Schools hiring judges are ultimately responsible for training.  Perhaps during a novice tournament, the speech moderator as well as a few veteran judges could offer training.   Varsity students may be able to assist with this process as well.

A suggestion of a more formalized approach to entries at the State Level tournament may eliminate challenges and stress the importance of the qualities embodied by the Maine Forensics Association.

Clarification for the future:  Use of internet published poetry as in slam poetry events (Button poetry).  Competitions are held to determine literary merit, but are not necessarily published with an ISBN number.

Ted Talks can be used in ODec. Transcriptions must be available.

Respectfully submitted,
Patricia Spilecki

Approved unanimously

Congressional Debate (Paul Bibeau, Kennebunk HS)

Report delivered via Jason Curry.

Congressional Debate began the season well, coming off of great representation at the NSDA National Tournament last June. All four of Maine’s Congressional representatives to Nationals advanced to the semi-finals and, in addition, one of them became National Champion! Incredible! All four students returned to Maine competition this year and helped make the 2015-16 season one of the most competitive and exciting!

The level of competition produced many exciting and competitive tournaments and has resulted in more schools sending more competitors to the Saturday events. The newer competitors have learned very quickly and have consistently pressured the veterans to advance. There is generally a stiff, but fair level of competition, and a fairly collegial atmosphere during the tournaments. We also have a large number of students who are participating and succeeding in out-of-state tournaments. Those competitors bring new strategies and styles back to our tournaments improving the level for all of our Maine competitors.

As we have tried to inform and involve more coaches and more schools in this category of debate, the weekend tournaments have grown immensely and we have encountered the “problems” of needing more rooms and more judges! By the time of the MFA State Tournament, we needed four chambers (3 Houses and a Senate), having almost 60 competitors and 12 judges! Very exciting! Using a pottery kiln for a judge’s desk is a bit tricky, but we had fun! We also, have had more gender balance in our participation and coaches have registered many great competitors.

We still need to get more consistent involvement and develop a bit more depth to insure that we have enough competitors and schools for the NSDA tournament. We just squeaked by this year to have the numbers to qualify four competitors for the NSDA tournament.

Overall, Congressional Debate has been and is expecting to continue to grow and improve the experience for all of the competitors in this event!

Thank you,
Paul Bibeau

Lincoln Douglas Debate (Dan Haskell, Chevrus HS)

New method for tabulating states.

Increase in participation.

question about the use of technology in the rounds-use of the computer in rounds

consider making sure that tournament invitation state how debate will be paired

If not, as for moderator’s report, the big news is that we used a new method for tabbing States.  It wasn’t without a couple of technical hiccups, but I think it was a good success overall.  I am interested in any feedback.

We had good participation across all three divisions, with kids advancing throughout the season (19 varsity, 14 JV, and 18 novice at States).  I like to see that.  We also added schools like Richmond and Berwick.

With technology, I think the kids know and understand the rules.  I also think they almost all abide by them almost all of the time.  The question is what do we do when there is a question.  But so far, this has only been a minor problem.

Approved unanimously.

Public Forum Debate (Joe Pelletier, Bangor HS)

Good year for PF.

Should we allow the maverick entries or allow two competitors from different schools combine into a team?

Regulation for states is to make sure that if there is a varsity member of a team whether the team should be a novice team. Might need to be on a case by case consideration.

Approved: unanimously

Elections

Open positions due to by-laws or stepping down:

• President-elect
• Vice president (Jason Curry stepping down)
• Secretary
• All moderators

President Elect

One year term-then you (hopefully, but not required) run for president. Shadow the president to learn the job. Works in State Tournament tab room.

Nominate: Brian Dodge from Deering HS (elected unanimously)

Vice President

Nominated: D’Arcy Robinson from Poland Regional HS (elected unanimously)

Secretary

Nominated: Lyndsy Denk from Falmouth HS (elected unanimously)

Speech moderator

Tory Gram of Orono HS expressed interest in role. Co-moderators proposed.

Nominated: Tory Gram of Orono HS and Pat Spilecki of Lewiston HS (elected in favor: 9, abstain: 1)

Congressional Debate moderator

Nominated: Paul Bibeau of Kennebunk HS (re-elected unanimously)

Lincoln Douglas moderator

Nominated: Dan Haskell of Chevrus HS (re-elected unanimously)

Public Forum moderator

Nominated: Joe Pelletier of Bangor HS (re-elected unanimously)

10:30 Technology committee report

Tournament setup in Tabroom.com requires a great deal of human bandwidth. Kris Deveau requested help to spread out the work for tournament registration setup. Volunteers: David Arenstam and Lyndsy Denk.

Ideally we want to have judges who are hired to use tabroom to register themselves.

How about using online debate ballots for judges to register their decision?

Eventually we want to get all scanned ballots online.

More people need to learn tabulation.

Might need to improve the congress ballots.

Report approval: unanimous

2016-2017 Calendar (proposed and tentative)

All tournaments are all events unless otherwise specified.

Sept. 9 Coaches meeting

Oct. 8

Oct. 15 Lincoln Academy (novice)

Oct. 22

Oct. 29 Bangor

Nov. 5 (SATs): Maranacook

Nov. 12 Lewiston

Nov. 19 Deering (debate, Congress), Falmouth (speech)

Dec. 3 (SATs): judge training-regional tournaments?

Dec. 10 Poland

Dec. 17 Lewiston

Jan. 7 Thornton

Jan. 14 York (debate, Congress), Skowhegan (speech):

Jan. 21 Cape Elizabeth

Jan. 28 States @ Brunswick

Feb. 4 NCFL national qualifiers @ Poland, States snow date

Feb. 11 NSDA national qualifiers @ Lincoln Academy, NCFL qualifiers snow date

Feb. 18 (SATs)

March 4 (one-act competitions)

March 11 (SATs) NSDA national qualifierssnow date

May 12 Spring Coaches meeting

Old business

Review of bylaws amendments passed this year. Read through the document. Consider moving by-laws entries V-IX into the State Handbook.

What exactly needs to be in the State by-laws and what should be in the state tournament handbook? Move discussion to new business.

Google Docs would help the process of editing and changing the by-laws and the handbook.

New Business

College Debate/Speech outreach

Use of technology in debate rounds

Codifying practices for the state tournament for speech for the state tournament:

Proposal 1: Challenges to pieces at States

1. To challenge a piece in a speech event, the following steps must be taken by the challenging team: The challenging team must have their coach submit in writing the piece being challenged, and the grounds on which it is being challenged. A piece can be challenged based on existence (validity, publication) of the piece or the imitation of the performance. In fields where the speech is the original work of the competitor, the speech may be challenged on the grounds of plagiarism.
2. Upon receiving a challenge to a piece in a speech event, the following steps will be taken:
   1. The tab personnel will ask for a transcript of the speech. Non-original works must be proven to be published in print. Failure to provide the transcript results in an automatic forfeit.
   2. After the transcript is provided, challenges to presentation will be researched by the tabroom. Any judge who has seen the piece that day can be called in to verify if the version of the speech presented online is too close to an imitation of the piece. If the judge deems that it is, then the challenge is accepted, and the challenged piece is forfeit.
3. Challenges will be handled by a tabroom staff member designated to that purpose.

Might want to research what the NSDA and NCFL procedure is and rework the guidelines for the state tournament. Want to have it done by beginning of the season. Want a good solid model.

Proposal: table proposal until there is a chance to rework it. Approved: unanimously

Proposal 2:  Speech judge requirements at States

1. Each participating school at a speech event shall be responsible to provide one judge for every five speech entries.
2. Judges shall have completed judges training and have the following experience. Judges training shall consist of attendance at an MFA instructional event, or other training provided by a local MFA speech coach.
   1. Judges may participate in a novice event with any prior speech judging experience. First time judges (without prior judging experience) shall have observed at least  two rounds of speech at an MFA tournament event with an experienced judge.
   2. Main Event Speech: Judges who have at least four prior rounds of speech  judging experience at MFA tournament events may participate in any speech event.
3. Post-secondary students with high school and/or collegiate speech experience shall be eligible to serve as speech judges.   MFA alumni students shall be limited to judging the Novice events until their second year.
4. Judges shall not judge speech rounds that include speech participants from the same school that the judge represents.
5. Parents of participating speech competitors shall not judge speech rounds in the speech division that their children participate.
6. Judges shall not judge any speech participant more than once at a given tournament event unless permitted by the tournament event director.Â
7. It shall be the participating school responsibility to identify speech judge qualifications. Judge qualifications shall be submitted with tournament event entry registration. In addition, any parent/school judging conflicts shall be identified with the event tournament entry registration.
8. In order to count towards a school’s judge burden, a judge must be able to judge at least 2 rounds of competition.

Need a proposal for judge qualifications in order to determine who is an acceptable judge. This should be the same for all events. Belongs in the state guidelines handbook.

Table this and work on this for the fall: Approved unanimously.

Break for lunch.

New business continued

New events added to speech and possible speech event changes

Perhaps look at adding two new events based on the NSDA new events: informative speaking and program oral interpretation.

Should we add them to the state tournament? Would it be advisable to encourage tournament directors to run this event at tournaments? Would help to prepare students for the national tournament.

More challenging events which ups the ante and increase the skill level of delivery. Both are college level events and could encourage students to continue with competition.

Might be contentious in regards to dropping other events.

Might want to table this discussion to the fall.

Speech moderators will work on a proposal for adding informative speaking and program oral interpretation to the list of offered events and combined Novice and varsity prose/poetry categories into an OIL program along with making ODEC a Novice level event available to Freshman and sophomore students only.

Judge training proposal

Take an additional fifteen minutes for the briefings to train judge better.

There are resources available on the web for judges to view of training clips. What can you do to train judges better?

Coaches should really train the judges.

What are the best use of resources for training? Maybe a form of certification or certificate to show that they have some knowledge about the event.

Where are they having a misinterpretation of rules and where is this opinion? Maybe we should pay for training or put the training online.

Moderators will try and formulate a training plan for judges in debate and speech for the fall meeting.

Clarification of Novice level

One year of competition and it is up to the coaches discretion.

Concern about the length of the tournaments and that is why many students can’t commit to joining

Can this be discussed in the fall.

Many things have been tried but nothing agreed upon.

Create a proposal for shortening tournaments.

Concerned about not being able to vote on certain issues and thus feeling disenfranchised.

Closing remarks

Thanks to Matt Leland for serving.

Motion: Thanks to Jason for all his years of service.

Adjournment

Post Meeting

CFL Report: D’Arcy Robinson

NSDA Report: Kris Deveau