Stacey Chen competed for North Allegheny High School in Wexford, Pennsylvania. She was last year’s NFL national champion in International extemp and was the first receipient of the Extemp Central National Points award after winning Glenbrooks, the George Mason University Patriot Games Extemp Round Robin, Harvard, and the Extemporaneous Speaking Tournament of Champions. Stacey now attends Yale University and is a contributor for Extemp Central. She shares her thoughts on the NFL National tournament in this article for Extemp Central readers.
NFL nationals is widely regarded as one of the best and most important tournaments of the year. While the opportunity for schools to travel beyond their local circuits and the week filled with events makes the tournament fun and exciting, it can also be one of the most stressful competitions for extempers. It is far too easy to lose sight of the fun nationals experience and burn out in early rounds, but keeping a few thoughts in mind can help make nationals one of your favorite tournaments.
The key way to ensure that you enjoy your nationals experience is to remember your own goals for the tournament. I attended nats three times (sophomore, junior, and senior year), and each year, my aims were extremely different based on my competitive success up to those points and my future hopes.
In sophomore year, I headed to Wichita not in extemp, but in congress. My goal that year was simple: I was not a national congress competitor; I wanted to be at nationals primarily to watch extemp outrounds. I ended up in extemp commentary, which was fun, but my favorite part of the tournament was watching both the IX and USX final rounds. Like me as a sophomore, non-senior competitors can get the most out of nationals by setting reasonable goals. Perhaps you want to break to octas; maybe break two rounds in extemp comm; but most importantly, seize every opportunity to watch other speakers. I found it awkward to sit in and watch the rest of my room in prelims, and some judges feel the same way, but you should absolutely watch every possible outround. Flow analysis, keep notes on which speakers you like or dislike, and figure out what you can take from their speeches and styles to improve yourself. When I watched the final rounds as a sophomore, I felt incredibly overwhelmed and never imagined that I would ever be remotely near their level. But remember that isn’t true; seeing their speeches and working until next year’s nationals really does make it possible for you to be in their place in the future, or reach whatever goals you set for yourself.
I competed in IX as a junior, and my competitive goal was simple: to break. Interestingly, I remember very little about actually extemping that year. Instead, Las Vegas nationals reinforced my favorite parts of high school forensics: travel and friends. Don’t be afraid to talk to strangers in the prep room – they might become your best friends over the course of one intense week. Don’t stay in your hotel room printing during your free time; you might never get to go to Kansas City ever again! (Although I’ll admit being in Las Vegas significantly increased my desire to sightsee)
Senior year was my most polarized nationals experience. I was excited, I was stressed, I was thankful, I was sad. It was the culmination of three and a half years of paper cuts, the last time I would see many of my best extemp friends, and my last chance to stand up on the big stage. I thought deeply about competitive strategy before the tournament, and enumerated below are some tips that helped me keep everything together.
1. Mix up your filing strategy. Print ordinary newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc) from their websites as you usually do, but also make a list of topics based on the topic areas provided and the headlines leading up to the tournament. Keep in mind that although the topics will not be written the day before the tournament starts because that would be logistically impossible, knowledgeable judges will expect the most recent analysis possible. Try to do some database research (Proquest, LexisNexis) if you have the resources. Pick up the latest journals and add some depth to your analysis; look for foreign sources if you’re an IXer. Judges won’t be impressed if you’re talking about China and you cite basic facts from Time, Newsweek, US News & World report, and USA Today; they will be impressed if you pull out relevant articles from Foreign Affairs and the South China Morning Post. You will also gain a better perspective on the issues.
2. Take a few hours to go through each of your files and look at their contents. You really, really don’t want to discover in third round draw that one of your novices cleaned out your Russia file and lost the econ subdivision. You also don’t want to find out that your pleasantly thick North Korea file actually only contains funny but useless articles about Kim Jong Il’s personal quirks. This can really help you figure out not only what you need to print, but also refresh you on topics that you’re behind on or articles you filed without reading.
3. Don’t go it alone! I spent hours and hours sitting in the lobby of my hotel in Birmingham with my laptop and printer, contrary to the advice I gave earlier to go out and enjoy your spare time. I frequently felt like standing up and screaming in the middle of researching Thailand, and that would’ve just made me look ridiculous. Get your teammates to write their cases in the same room, take a coffee break with your out-of-state friends, go to dinner with your coach.
Check back tomorrow to see the rest of Stacey’s tips for success at NFL Nationals!