Daniel Kind competed for Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando, Florida. He was the 2022 NCFL national champion, 2022 NSDA national runner-up, Florida state champion, 2022 Extemp Central Points Race champion, while also breaking the single-season record for single-season wins (7), top-three finishes (12), and final round appearances (12). Daniel is attending the University of Chicago, where he studies public policy and urban studies.
Editor’s Note: This interview happened in the fall of 2022 but we decided to embargo it until the start of the 2023-2024 season.
Logan Scisco: First, Daniel, congratulations on a great season (in 2021-2022), winning the NCFL National Championship and the Extemp Central National Points Race.
Daniel Kind: Thank you, it’s a dream come true.
Scisco: Explain how you got your start in extemporaneous speaking. What drew you to the event?
Kind: For me, extemp is beautiful because you can master it like an art and break it down like a science. I distinctly remember a group of high schoolers coming to my class in 8th grade to recruit students to join our debate team. They explained all the events from PF to OO; when they got to extemp, all they said was, “that one’s really hard, don’t do that one.” Naturally, I had to do that one. On the first day of practice in the summer of 2017, I met two former LHP competitors, Andrew Langford and Cameron Bonnewell, and a guy who would eventually become my coach, Bradley Wascher. They explained extemp to me in a fascinating way that instantly hooked me. I loved learning more about domestic and international events, and it was fun being part of a team. After traveling to my first tournament, I knew extemp was for me. I guess the rest is history.
Scisco: When you were going through your extemp career, what extempers did you try to model or look up to?
Kind: As a young extemper, I met a lot of smart, kind people who helped shape my extemp career. Regarding style and structure, I think I’d say Kay Rollins and Jacqueline Wei. Kay is a generational talent whose speeches were always analytically excellent and chock-full of witty quips. Most of all, I remember Kay being humble and kind to others. It’s a quality I aspired to have. Jacqueline, having come from a PF background at Plano West, blew me away with the depth of her arguments and the specificity of her warrants. I remember watching her finals speech in USX at Nats 2019 and being awestruck by how fluently she could list off statistics. There were also a lot of Florida extempers who helped me locally, like Gus Lanz and Tristan Wertanzl, to name a few; even when I was young, they believed in me and really helped me grow as a person. My coach came from a collegiate speech background, so he helped me model many of my speeches on successful college competitors, particularly Farrah Bara and Lily Nellans (who I consider to be the extemp GOAT).
Scisco: What was the biggest struggle that you had to overcome in extemporaneous speaking? How did you overcome it?
Kind: I struggled for a long time with being myself. It sounds platitudinous, but it’s true! I believe extemp is the event that most directly rewards hard work. But if you make a graph where the x-axis is “hours-worked” and the y-axis is “extemp skill,” it’s logarithmic, meaning it takes exponentially more work the better you get. It takes much more work to go from 98%-99% than it does to go from 50%-70%. In order to bridge that gap from good to great, you need to be confident in yourself and comfortable in your own skin. It frustrated me when I was a freshman, sophomore, and even junior because I just needed to grow up! It’s more than just becoming more mature in the way you think about the world, it’s maturity in the way you conduct yourself and maturity in the way you speak. I think I found my stride in extemp when I not just learned but accepted that as truth.
Scisco: Provide your summary of the Florida extemporaneous speaking circuit. What is it like competing in the Sunshine State?
Kind: I’d say that along with Texas, California, Minnesota, and maybe a couple of others, Florida is one of the most competitive states. Florida’s extemp circuit can really be broken up into two distinct regions: North/Central Florida and South Florida. South Florida, simply by virtue of its population density, tends to be more competitive, but Central Florida holds its own. The two big extemp schools in Central Florida—where I’m from—are Trinity and Lake Highland, and there’s a bit of a friendly rivalry there.
Central and South Florida compete in our individual local CFL circuits and mostly meet each other during FFL State or tournaments like Blue Key, Sunvite, or The Tradition. I enjoyed competing in Florida, though I made great friends, and it’s a cooperative (if muggy) atmosphere.
Scisco: What is the best piece of advice you ever received about extemporaneous speaking? Who gave it to you?
Kind: I think it’s a piece of advice I got from Justin Graham— a Trinity competitor and the 2016 NCFL Champion—after my championship at Harvard my junior year: “Shake it off and keep winning.” It reminded me to stay humble and keep my mind where my feet are. Initially, I was a bit taken aback, I thought, “C’mon, can’t I celebrate and be happy just for tonight?” But really, it took me a couple of months to get what he meant. In an event like extemp, there’s always room for improvement. There’s no such thing as “the perfect speech.” Winning is nice, sure, but what you learn from it is more important. I kept that in the back of my head for the rest of my extemp career.
Scisco: Did you ever have a favorite source? If so, what made it so great?
Kind: I loved citing journal articles and academic publications just because the ethos that came with them was so heavy. Whenever I would find an article in a source like The New York Times that cited a peer-reviewed journal article or source from a university, I always quoted it directly from the source. I’m a firm believer in elevating sources in extemp wherever possible, beyond just being impressive to judges. There were bonus points involved if you could remember the author(s) name(s). I remember at an outround at Harvard my junior year, I cited The Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy, and my judge just stopped typing and looked at me in disbelief. In my NSDA finals speech, I got to cite an author from UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, which was pretty cool. Go Maroons.
Scisco: Going into this season, what were your goals? How did you “pre-plan” for any possible disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic?
Kind: For the last year of my extemp career, I wanted to go out with a “bang.” For me, that meant going to as many tournaments as I could and giving my all at every single one, like a shock and awe approach. I think I benefited from the fact that most of my sessions with my coach were done over Skype and, later, Zoom. Before COVID even started, I was already giving speeches online. By the time the season’s first tournament rolled around, I had the mentality of “I’m more prepared than I’ll ever be; let’s show ‘em what I got!” When COVID hit and tournaments started moving online, I converted one of the hallways in my house into my little speech nook, where I gave and prepped my speeches. I hope—for the sake of future extempers reading this—no one will ever have to make an extemp nook in their house again.
Scisco: You were one of the most well-traveled extempers in the country in the 2021-2022 season. What was your favorite tournament to attend? Why?
Kind: My personal favorite had to be The Barkley Forum at Emory. I was successful all four years I went, and the tournament was always well-run and well-planned. The Emory plates and keys have gotta be up there as far as trophies go. I have very fond memories of Emory during my sophomore year, as it was one of the last times I went to a tournament before COVID started. Druid Hills is a very nice neighborhood, and my team and I got to walk around getting ice cream, eating at a restaurant, and easing our anxieties before awards. I also kind of liked—and laughed at—how seriously the tournament took itself; it seemed so grandiose and official. Don’t get me wrong, I love a casual tournament, but they brought the Mayor of Atlanta to speak at the opening ceremony. Can’t beat that.
Scisco: What preparations did you make for NCFL and NSDA nationals in 2022? Did you approach these tournaments the same or differently?
Kind: I think NCFL and NSDA are more similar than many believe. NSDA is a much larger and much longer tournament, though; you have to treat it like a marathon rather than a sprint. NCFL is a more traditional tournament, only lasting two days. But in terms of judging pool and individual speech strategy, I treated them mostly the same. Your speeches must appeal to a very wide base to be successful since judges come from all over the country. (During COVID, I actually found that to be true of most tournaments since judges could judge rounds from their living rooms.) With that in mind, I prepared for NSDA and NCFL the same way I prepared for every other tournament: giving speech after speech after speech after speech.
If you want to get faster, run.
Scisco: Walk us through your win at the 2022 NCFL National Championship. How did that tournament progress for you, and what do you think contributed to your victory?
Kind: Well, the funny thing is I graduated high school the afternoon before NCFL started. Literally, as soon as I got home from the ceremony, I took off my cap and gown and rushed to the airport to get to the tournament. Keep in mind, this was one of two in-person tournaments I had been to in two years (the other being MBA, which isn’t a traditional tournament in any sense of the word). I was excited to be back. I caught up with and hugged my circuit friends, who I hadn’t seen in person for years (or, in some cases, ever). Going through my in-person prelims and looking judges in the eye while I gave my speech reminded me why I loved the event. On Sunday, octos, quarters, and semis went by, and I was in the final round.
We did a coin flip for the topic area for the final round, between “social and ethical issues” and “foreign policy.” I slightly preferred foreign policy but was fine with either. I drew “What can be done to improve the lives of the homeless in the United States.” Throughout my time in high school, I did extracurricular work for my passion project on Orlando’s housing crisis. It took me all of about 2 seconds to pick that one and rush back to my table. I knew it was gonna be a home run. When I stepped into the room and saw my friends and team there to support me, I felt a rush of confidence. For seven minutes, I stormed the stage and delivered the most passionate speech of my life, and by the time I got to the conclusion, I actually had to take a moment to stop myself from choking up. When I was done, I calmly stepped out of the room and just kinda broke down. That speech might be one of my favorites.
Scisco: You led the National Points Race wire-to-wire in 2022. Did you ever feel any pressure from this and/or the pressure of other people’s expectations on you at tournaments? How did you handle this?
Kind: I’d say there was a lot of pressure, yeah. That was actually something that really surprised me—it’s almost deafening. Everybody is in your ear for one reason or another, and it’s absolutely overwhelming. I think you hit it right on the nose, Logan, about expectations. My entire senior year felt dominated by the word “expect.” When you’re put under a microscope by a community of hundreds of zealous high schoolers, your every move is scrutinized, for better or for worse. I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by some past extempers, and I’m sure some future extempers will relate. If you win a tournament, you do what you were “expected” to do. When you don’t win, you messed up somehow, it’s an upset. There are a lot of people in your corner, but there’s absolutely a target on your back. Competing at this level for any period of time requires a lot of mental fortitude and thick skin. You need to have friends, family, coaches, and teammates to fall back on.
Scisco: As someone who competed in virtual and in-person settings in 2021-2022, which did you prefer? Do you think the circuit should continue some virtual offerings in the upcoming years?
Kind: Oh, I much prefer in-person. Even though I eventually adjusted to the virtual setting, I always felt that my performances were hampered by the screen. My speeches worked best when I was able to hit emotional beats and relate to an audience directly. There’s only so much you can work a crowd on a screen, and it kinda falls apart if the crowd is too big. But I do think virtual tournaments have their role, especially in making tournaments accessible to all. I’m hesitant to support hybrid tournaments (with some competitors online and some in-person) since it seems to be overly complex and gives unfair advantages to certain competitors.
Scisco: Do you think extemporaneous speaking needs to make any rule changes? If so, what?
Kind: I think we should have source checks in every round and three-minute cross-examination as much as possible. I think there’s a limit to how much this can be done logistically, but tournaments should strive to implement them more. At its core, extemp is an analytical event and should be treated with the intellectual rigor and scrutiny of any other analysis-based activity. Far too often, I see extempers rely on their ability to lie to get ahead, some who even seem to be proud about it. There’s a difference between coming up with your own analysis on the fly and straight-up making up statistics or stories that did not happen. We need to have more redundant systems to keep extemp fair and ethical.
Scisco: If you had to meet yourself four years ago and give yourself any tips or tricks to get good at extemporaneous speaking?
Kind: For me personally, I think it would be all about maturity. In my freshman year, I was an overzealous kid with a lot of ambition and not a lot of maturity. There was always going to be a ceiling for how well I could do until I grew up a bit. The most important thing, though, to get better at extemp is all about practice. I don’t care how you do it, dry prepping, time-crunch drills, full speeches, whatever, just speak! There’s no silver bullet, and there’s no secret trick to get really good at extemp. I think everybody starts somewhere based on their natural charisma and speaking talent, and then they can work their way to get better. It all comes down to that, though. You level the playing field through practice, practice, practice.
Scisco: What are your future academic and career plans?
Kind: I’m studying public policy at the University of Chicago! Ever since I was a little kid, I have wanted to be a civil rights attorney, so I’m planning to go to law school after my undergraduate career. I love cities and urban studies, so I’m ecstatic to be in Chicago and definitely want to do some work researching America’s beating urban hearts. I’ll continue to debate in college as a part of UChicago’s APDA team, and I will definitely be doing freelance extemp coaching. I’m not sure where my career will take me, but I’m considering impact litigation. Ultimately, I just want to leave the world better than how I found it. I think a friend put it best: “Go do good things.”
Scisco: Thank you again for speaking to us, Daniel, and congratulations on your success this season!
Kind: Thank you so much for having me, Logan. I’ve been a reader since I was 14. Keep making the extemp community great!