Spring(board) into Success: The NSDA Springboard Series

For years members of the speech and debate community have called on the governing bodies of our event to give us more opportunities for participation and for learning. Admittedly, the NSDA and leading organizations within the debate community don’t always implement these calls into effective action, but a recent effort by leaders in the community may have given competitors a stellar opportunity for participation and growth in the future. This is the NSDA Springboard Series.

The NSDA partnered with the Julia Burke Foundation in 2020 to produce the Springboard Series. These recurring tournaments, as described by the NSDA itself, are a low stakes-high reward chance for debaters to get a free one-round practice weekly. At a quick glance, providing a few practice rounds seems like a decently commendable effort by the NSDA to respond to the community’s call for more opportunity, but many people likely don’t view it as a game-changing effort. However, it should be worth noting that if properly approached by debaters and coaches alike, the Springboard Series could very well become the great equalizer between low-resourced and high-resources programs.

In order for us to understand how the Springboard Series can create a level playing field for low-resourced programs and the debaters that hail from these programs, we first need to understand what it is. So what exactly does the Springboard Series entail? To be specific, the Springboard Series is an annual schedule of twenty-four tournaments that are held online during the standard calendar debate year, occurring twice a week on a bi-weekly basis.

These tournaments occur in the evening and provide debaters of all levels an opportunity to sample national circuit debate topics, legislation, current-event extemp questions, as well as try out new speech topics or techniques.

Now that we’ve provided a basic synopsis of how the Springboard Series works, we can begin to examine how exactly a seemingly minor NSDA project makes massive strides in moving the needle on equality within the activity through a commitment to practice, fundamentals, preparation, and risk.

First, the Springboard Series is a massive step towards equality by offering cost-free practice in a time period where extra practice is oftentimes too expensive for the average debater. The impact of this cannot be understated largely because both practice and learning have become time prohibitive. Beginning with practice, even the idea of holding mock rounds after school can be difficult as some institutions close their doors at the end of the school day which makes frequent practice difficult if the goal is to get a large portion of a team together. Moreover, other teams face the issue of not having enough practice opportunities. At no fault of club advisors or coaches, scheduling can become another issue that either limits practice to once a week or shuts them down entirely for parts of the year. As such, debaters are faced with a barrier to growth since practicing one’s craft is one of the primary ways to improve or receive feedback.

That’s exactly the hole that the Springboard Series solves on a bi-weekly basis for debaters across the country. Whether a debater hails from a team that practices frequently on campus or a team that cannot schedule frequent practices at all, the Springboard Series ensures that practice opportunities are available for everyone within the community. Further, the quick-pace format of these rounds being anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour long is perfect to mirror how an in-class practice may look in terms of time spent performing a piece or running a particular case. This ‘practice how you play’ format in terms of time spent is also benefited from the fact that Springboard Series serve as a chance to receive quick feedback from several judges which provides additional perspectives on one’s performance on top of the feedback likely already being received during regular practices.

Second, It is also worth noting that attending a Springboard session is a great leap for cost-effective practice and developing the fundamentals necessary to grow as debaters. While there are already a handful of great resources for debaters to practice throughout the year such as Space City Camp, Academy 37, and the Equality in Forensics Guides (all of which are worthwhile for readers of this article to check out) there is certainly a gap in opportunities to build fundamental skills outside of league tournaments or costly travel tournaments. Herein lies the beauty of the Springboard Series as judges are instructed that the primary purpose of these rounds is to give students as much feedback as possible. This instruction is often reflected in ballots as they don’t typically follow a debater’s nightmare feedback scenario of “Tough round, 6” but instead are full of diverse pieces of feedback from coaches, parents, and former competitors. The benefit of this is perhaps the largest positive implication of this series as most debaters must travel (and pay large amounts of money) to National Circuit tournaments in order to get the best feedback. For most debaters this isn’t an effective way to get better, so being able to frequently receive feedback on one’s fundamental skills for free is a great way to improve the overall quality of debaters across the board. Whether these debaters choose to travel to the National Circuit after this or not, the speech and debate community is much better off when we give everyone a chance to improve without breaking the bank.

Third, and perhaps an area of controversy, is the opportunity that the Springboard Scrimmage Series provides participants with to engage with monthly debate topics and get extra preparation. Crucially, the NSDA creates monthly legislation for Congress, uses common extemp topics, and utilizes monthly LD/PF/CX topics that are used by most local debate leagues and oftentimes larger tournaments to supplement student submissions. The Springboard Scrimmage uses many of these topics for their own tournaments, and thus is a great way for debaters to look ahead at the conversations and major arguments surrounding topics that they may find themselves arguing over in rounds in the near future.

In some senses, this could be viewed as an unfair competitive advantage as those who attend Springboard Scrimmages will likely have seen legislation that is being debated at local and regional tournaments. In this manner, those competitors have already had an extra round of preparation dealing with topics and may be able to interact with certain arguments with an added layer of knowledge compared to participants who don’t attend a scrimmage. However, I think in the spirit of providing extra opportunities to those who typically cannot access them this is a necessary evil. By no means does the Springboard Scrimmage discriminate against those with more resources, rather it works on a desire-driven basis wherein those who truly take the time and effort to seek improvement will have the chance to. An added benefit of course, is being able to engage with these topics ahead of time and for them to work on critical argumentation and speaking skills.

Finally, there is the ever-elusive chance to take risks. In so many ways, speech and debate at the highest level has become risk-averse as status quo norms de-incentivize risks with the pain of reduced ballots. As such, many rounds can often feel like they follow the same script and can become (dare I say) boring. The chief reason behind this adherence to the status quo is driven by a lack of chances to take opportunities outside of local and regional tournaments. For many, the only real simulation of full rounds they get are just that– full rounds where they are already discouraged from taking risks. The benefit of attending Springboard Scrimmages is that debates are given the liberty of once more taking risks in a low-stakes environment. If a competitor wants to run an abnormal case, test out a unique intro, or craft creative rhetoric they will be able to. The fortunate part of taking these risks at a Springboard Scrimmage is that you get immediate feedback on it, but you also don’t spend weeks (and copious amounts of money) on prepping that risk-filled approach, and thus aren’t at threat of being seen as ‘wasteful’ with an opportunity.

In reviewing these four pillars of the Springboard Scrimmage such as commitment to practice, fundamentals, preparation, and risk it is clear that a solid framework for success has already been established. There are certainly more improvements that can be made, and there are certainly members of our community who could help expand on the work already started. It is crucial that we begin to bring light to the Springboard Scrimmage and give its creators their flowers for their advocacy for providing student opportunity. The question for all of us to consider is now: will we as a community use this opportunity to ‘springboard’ our peers forward?