I was biting nails furiously, ceaselessly twirling my pen, and obsessively crossing and uncrossing my legs. Yes, I was nervous and anxious like an expectant father, and it suddenly hit me: So, this is what coaches have to suffer through during important matches. For the first time in my life I'm a coach--of anything, really. I've always been on the receiving end of the instruction and guidance such as during my old soccer-playing days but never actually knew what runs through the coach's mind during the heat of the battle. Now I know. Though we prepared as best as we could, given the whatever scarce resources we have at our disposal, there's always this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it's never enough. I'm still learning the nuances of competitive debating and I'm afraid that I'm not able to provide my debaters with all help they need. We tirelessly discussed the motions--there were just so many of them that it seemed like a Sisyphean task--and constantly rehearsed and held mock debates days before the competitions.
But in all, I can say that I'm highly satisfied with our performance in the recent English debate competitions. Last week in the sub-regional competition in Banjarmasin, the boys' team placed second while the girls' team lost in the first round, albeit in a very closely fought debate. The boys could have won in the final but the limitation of the debate motion simply didn't work out in their favor and it was unfair, to say the least. The motion was about increasing parking fees in the province of South Kalimantan and the opposition, which was the affirmative team, confined the limit of the debate to the city of Banjarmasin. Considering that the affirmative team comes from Banjarmasin and NONE of my debaters are, the limitation was indeed biased and advantageous to the affirmative team. What my boys didn't know that they could challenge the limitation and refuse to debate the motion based on the confine set by the affirmative team. Anyway, it was still a sweet victory because they knocked out the top-seeded school in the semifinal, and for the first time ever my school has ever reached the final. The girls did very well also and put up a ferocious fight before losing to the aforementioned top-seeded school. The motion was about genetic engineering. The girls also lost on technicality, which sucked because it had nothing to do with the quality of their arguments or their speaking ability.
Today there was another competition closer to home here in Banjar Baru. The results were relatively disappointing but not because of lack of efforts from my debaters. They were phenomenal and I couldn't be any prouder of them. They totally rocked the joint! It was the judges who managed to rain on our parade. The boys and the girls' Team A lost in the first round. I'm not a sore loser by any means and I can take defeat graciously--only if it's fair and justified. The problem was the judges weren't even feigning to be fair and their post-debate comments weren't at all justified. The girls' Team A had the bad luck of being drawn to debate the host team, and that was just the start of their predicaments.
Adding insult to injury, one of the judges is an English teacher at the host school. The girls were the affirmative team and the motion was about nationalization of foreign companies in Indonesia. The girls set the limit the debate to renegotiation of contracts signed between foreign companies and the Indonesian government. They were on fire! From the first speaker all the way to the third speaker, the girls marshalled facts and data to support their arguments, which I helped to compiled to a large extent. The negative team wasn't able to go toe-to-toe with the girls' arguments and just feebly recycled the same two points throughout the debate. They also refused to debate within the limitation and simply made baseless rebuttals in response to the girls' impregnable arguments without even addressing the questions at hand. It was a solid debate for the girls and we had no doubt at the time that we were going to win this match. Alas, it just wasn't meant to be.
The judges managed to pop our premature celebratory bubbles. The comments made by the judges showed lack of understanding of the issue and their sheer inattentiveness to the ongoing debate. I noticed that the judges were chatting amongst themselves during the debate and weren't even paying attention to the speakers. It was pathetic and wholly unprofessional, to say the very least. Despite the stellar performance by the girls and the lackluster display by their opponents, we lost by quite a sizeable margin. What a travesty! I haven't really been this pissed off in a long time and was feeling even more devastated than my girls, though I did have to console them as they were on the verge of crying. I had to keep repeating to myself over and over again my favorite mantra whenever I'm faced with irrational Indonesians and their peculiar ways of doing things in this country: TII, TII, TII (This Is Indonesia!). How quaintly Indonesia: corrupt judiciary from the Constitutional Court all the way down to high school debate judges.
Still, the girls' Team B won their match despite being the heavy underdog and two of its members were rookies on their first debate outing. After the debate competition we all went to AZ (pronounced Ah-Zet), the local fried chicken joint, for some well-deserved dinners and ice creams on my treat--all 20 boys and girls (9 debaters and 11 supporters). The teams took their lost in stride and we ended up just laughing it off. It was hard to describe the feelings I went through today and to see their beaming faces during the dinner afterwards. Man, what a day! Oh, I forget to mention that the boys' Scrabble team placed first in the same sub-regional tournament last week, which was another cause for celebration. The Scrabble team practiced in my house almost everyday and being a seasoned Scrabble player myself, I did give them a pointer or two. The practice and the tutorials certainly paid off. I would say that it has been a very productive and fulfilling weeks for me leading up to the debate and Scrabble competitions despite my skipping a few classes. Now I have to find the ways to make up to the rest of my students for missing their classes today.
p/s: The girls' Team B won third place in the competition after losing to the home team in a heavily-biased semi-final. We had a much more superior team, which was still evidently not enough. Guess which team ultimately won the competition? No prize for the right answer though.
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