Roosevelt's 15 freshmen who attended Novi Nationals in Iowa City this weekend proved themselves beyond any doubt. No Roosevelt student produced less than a .500 record and if there was sweeps awards it would have been between Valley, Portage Central (MI) and us. I would roughly calculate we would have won it.
PFD: Roosevelt defended our Novice Nationals Championship from last year with 3 Roosevelt teams officially tying for first: Mike Flannery/Sam Roeder; Sarah Larson/Alex Patch and Catherine Chiodo/Minh Tam Le. The team of Adriane DeMuth and Aida Ver Ploeg seeded 5th but didn't advance without a winning record. FR faced and defeated Okoboji 3-2 in semi finals.
Our other two teams were in a close out on the other side of the bracket. FR wins a match that clears the other two teams. Great team work here.
CX: Harrison Hayward and Nick Swingle stunned a lot of teams in policy given the inexperience of Nick in policy debate. They lost in semi finals (along with a Valley team) to Omaha Westside's novice seniors.
Congress: A strong showing of the Michigan students took places 1-5. Tess Yocom, who switched to Congress one one day's notice because OI was dropped, finished a close 6th and Caroline Alexander was 9th.
Ox Yoke Inn: We enjoyed (well, almost everyone, enjoyed) our annual German ritual for dinner in the Amana Colonies Saturday night. Tess Yocom is our new Amelia Martin and will be accordingly treated to something "special" at the banquet! It took all of Mike Flannery's effort to swallow a piece of cultered swine but on about the tenth try--he finally accomplished the job.
Novice Nationals was smaller this year due to the early Easter Holiday playhing havoc with the national qualifier schedule. However, the LD field was brutal; the policy field was challenging and neither Congress or PFD were exactly easy. It was a very good job by Roosevelt.
By the way, Dowling left very early clearing no one to out rounds!
