By now most of you know that we won the debate championship of the All Iowa finals and narrowly lost the speech championship. It was an impressive Roosevelt showing and everyone needs to be proud of the effort because it was one of our best efforts yet! As always there were moments of celebration and those of disappointments. I hope that everyone keeps in mind that no one is perfect and can always produce their best at the key moment desired. Sometimes we push ourselves to far in the quest of winning--sometimes not far enough. It is all a learning and growing experience. How we handle victory and defeats defines us--not the fact we won or lost.
We had a couple of speech students knocked out early or who were disappointed in final rounds. If I haven't spoken with you yet about those rounds--see me soon...as I might be able to share some perspective. We had a couple of ugly loses in LD land. Still, when the day was done, Roosevelt hadn't done this well in LD since 1999. It was also a speech effort stronger than last year's effort, which also fell short to Iowa City West.
I have had three emails today from coaches who respected our efforts...Iowa City West, Okoboji and Dowling. All three emails recognized the effort and how well our students were prepared and performed. Catherine may not have won extemp but she sure as heck impressed one of her judges from Iowa City West. That coach believes she is a real candidate at nationals. (And she is).
Harrison and Taylor were singled out in another email as two kids denied but were champions anyway.
I learned a long time ago that to be a State Champion or more takes work, lots of it and a lot of luck. Things have to break your way--a finals panel that you can live with, the right questions, the right room, the right audience, the right opponents, etc.
It is not the championships that define you but rather the consistency of performances that define you. There are those who get lucky once. There are those who win on a freak deal (not our kids who worked their tails off). But the real winners are those who do it everyday and consistently produce a high results.
The Waukee coach commented after Mike and Sam won the PF championship that all of our kids are consistently solid in every debate. She wished she had students who could find that consistent high level of performance. It was the difference between her team and ours.
If you are student who has consistently worked to get better--practiced regularly, and have done all the things that one should do to win--and didn't...here is what you have won:
The RESPECT of your coaches, team and your opponents. That respect is worth far more than a plaque.
I watched something very carefully during debate awards. How did our opponents react to our student's success's? Lets just say for the vast majority of schools, their respect for Roosevelt students was obvious. It was gratifying to see.
It is rare when students come up to an opposing coach and say congratulations or good job or something like that...but it happened to me several times this weekend.
It is also rare when an opposing coach is moved enough to speak to a team as happened on Friday. She knew we were hurting and she knew why. We focused our efforts on an entire team--they focused their efforts on about 6 kids and got away with it.
Watching our brief team meeting she said she learned something about our group of students--she could tell from watching our student's reactions in that meeting that we wouldn't be denied again. Her congratulations for winning debate said something to the effect that her students wouldn't have come back and done it--that we had a chemistry, determination and specialness about us that was significant.
Your coaches are proud of all of you. You have earned the respect of the speech and debate community in a way I've not seen in a long, long time. Now that you have earned this level of respect--hold your heads high, don't be cocky, don't let emotions get you...keep the respect you have worked so hard to earn.
