As much as we miss debating in person, online tournaments do have the upshots of massively reducing travel time. So, instead of flying to Dublin for the Trinity Intervarsity tournament this February, we all met up at the WU campus here in Vienna – thanks again for the rooms, Regis! There, we ate a dubiously healthy amount of pizza and let off steam together. In between that, we had our debates on Zoom, consisting of 5 inrounds and multiple outrounds over two days.
That strategy seems to have payed off as we managed to scatter ourselves across all break categories: Despite speaking together on short notice, Miri & Paula managed to break to Open Quarters with 10 team points, where everyone else cheered them on from one room over. Miri also placing as 6th best ESL [1] speaker! Afterwards, both Mira & Victor and Liam & Raphael got to debate about how points should be given out in artistic sports for their finals – Liam & Raphael didn’t quite win their Pro-Am final [2], but Mira & Victor won the ESL final!
Last, but definitely not least, Marina did a stellar job as a Deputy CA [3]! We maybe didn’t get to see her as much given how much work she put in, but her music choices before every round gave us that little extra serotonin boost we needed.
If you’re curious about the motions, who our opponents were, or just like looking at stats, here’s the tab for as long as it stays hosted.
[1] English as a second language
[2] Teams with at least 1 member with little tournament experience
[3] Chief Adjudicator
