Below you can read the impressions of our Trials and Training Weekend that took place in early January. The goal was to form our National Team and Development Team. Our two invited Chief Adjudicators Zarina Bell-Gam from the UK and Aniket Godbole from Slovenia served as external judges and consultants. Over 30 school students from Vienna and Graz participated. From Team Austria, the Head Coach (Marina Kojić) and Team Manager (Anna Neuber) took part in the selection process. One of the participants, Felix, captured the weekend in this blog post:

You read that correctly. Trials were on the 4^th and 5^th of January. It was competitive, it was intense, but everyone had a great time. Here’s how all of it happened.

Day 1:

It all started on a cold Saturday morning in the building of the 10^th district in Vienna. More than 30 people showed up either to trial or to just debate for fun, which is a lot considering WSDC Austria’s short history. Everyone went to a massive room with beautiful pictures of Austrian history. There we got info about who debates and the motions. We were all kind of excited because a lot was on the line. I mean, who does not want to go to Panama for WSDC? However, only 8 of us got to debate at once. So the others had to do another activity like practicing how to judge or do a debate, which has nothing to do with your placement. On the trial path, our 2 CAs  Zarina Bell-Gam and Aniket Godbole had to judge the debates whilst Marina and Anna were spying on our preps.

Now I’ll get to the title: You are probably wondering, what on earth sponges have to do with trials. So quick story time. Ago and I went to KIK to buy something soft to have a swordfight with. Unfortunately, the massive 18 sponge pack broke pretty quickly. So, we just used the sponges as fidget toys. Now we take them to every tournament. (Most recently ESDC in Istanbul)

Day 2:

We got to the same building again and mingled in the same room. There we got something peculiar: Some of us had to perform a massive number of 1^st speeches one after another. I was a part of that group. So, about 8 people debated 1 vs . Whilst exhausting, the worst had yet to come. We had to do interviews about our potential WSDC career. They took 12 of us and put us in a room, confiscating our phones beforehand. Therefore, we did what any sensible teenagers would do in this kind of situation and started playing werewolf. We got a lot of rounds done, but the more time passed, the less people were in the room, making the game less fun. Afterwards (after everyone had done their interview), we talked about what kind of questions we got asked. We quickly found out that some questions were similar, and some weren’t. After our brief chat, we got called into the main hall, where we got the results:

National team (Team Austria Gold):

• Mihail
• Viktor
• Elisa
• Sophie
• Elena

Development Squad (Team Austria Tungsten):

• Felix F (reserve for national team)
• Violetta
• Melina
• Yoto
• Felix P
• Clemens (reserve for development squad) 

That’s it from my part. Hope it was a fun read.

Felix Piletta-Toniot [proud Tungsten member]

Read more about Team Austria, the World and European Championship here.