Fall Coaches Meeting Minutes
Virtual
Time 8:00 a.m.-noon, September 11, 2021
Lyndsy Denk (at large), Jason Curry (Greely), Dan Haskell (Cheverus), D’Arcy Robinson (Poland Region HS), David Paye (Scarborough HS), Ellen Parent (Falmouth HS), David Arenstam (Thornton Academy), John Russell (Yarmouth HS), Joe Hahn (Morse HS), Kathleen Halm (Lincoln Academy), Kaylee Pomelow (Lawrence HS), Larry Bartlett (Morse HS), Matt Leland (Bangor HS), Melanie Kyer (York HS), Pat Spilecki (Lewiston HS), Randy Hughes-King (at large), Tom Macisso (Kennebunk HS), Gayle Pellegrini (Waterville HS), Kat Newcomb (Erskine Academy), Lisa Melanson (Cape Elizabeth HS), Nick Waldron (at large), Maura Smith (Skowhegan), Neil Gross (Colby College), Stephanie Parlee (Foxcroft Academy), Sarah Getchell (Waynflete), Kailey Smith (Camden Hills Regional HS)
Nomination: Hughes-King (Parent, Robinson) single ballot
Departing:
Returning coaches:
Welcome to:
Seeking mentorship:
Approved
In remembrance
Approved
President’s note: Due to continued risk with COVID-19, we are planning to start this season with virtual tournaments. In early November and periodically as needed the officers will meet to assess the viability of opening the season to in-person tournaments starting in December. Otherwise we will continue to run the season virtually. We are looking for hosts, especially for States and national qualifiers at the end of the season.
Any tournaments with inclement weather will be converted to virtual rather than postponed.
Motion: Accept season calendar with details to fill in later (Curry, Parent). Approved
The final calendar is maintained on the web site here and on the Google Calendar.
Read the details from the NSDA here.
Tabroom is instituting fees for tabulating events run in-person. Registration is free, but need to pay to begin the tournament. First 50 entries free. When using NSDA Campus, those entries are free.
No refunds, but can purchase up to 30 minutes before start.
Tech team evaluated the options and there are not a ton of good alternatives. Sam Rouse has mentioned that, because the platform is open source, there might be a legal complication that would allow us to acquire the code to run our own.
Q (Parlee): What is the possibility of running hybrid tournaments and does that give us a deal on the fees?
Q (Smith): Would it be easier/cleaner to increase MFA membership dues? It has been $75 a year for a long time. School athletics memberships are several in numbers and a lot more expensive.
Denk: As District Chair, this has already come up in some NSDA meetings. I’ve expressed concern about the pricing model and the burden it places on us.
Melanson: I would advocate that the MFA absorb some or all of the fees this year and we reassess in the Spring.
Make a copy of the calculator to play here.
Resolution: The Maine Forensics Association will cover the cost of the new in-person tabroom fees. (Hughes-King, Melanson)
Motion: The Maine Forensics Association will cover the cost of the new in-person tabroom fees for the 2021-2022 tournament season. (Denk)
Parent: If we keep our current fee structure of $7 per entry, I think most schools have budgeted for that. The discount last year to $5 was a nice bonus.
Denk: As Maine District Chair I will be keeping a close eye on this development and advocating loudly for the NSDA to adjust their pricing model to not be profit-driven.
In the Spring, Denk walked through proposed by-laws changes and intended to initiate voting over the summer. We’re now ready to conduct voting.
Proposed changes are itemized here.
While I don’t have proposals to share with you today, I do want to get a feel for how coaches want to proceed with documentation:
M: Smith: I’ve had a student fall in the category of a low enrollment event. We should think about the students first. If they’ve worked all season on this piece, they deserve the accolades. My student was devastated that she couldn’t support Sweeps. My biggest concern is that the decision is made last-minute, which doesn’t accommodate decision-making for transferring events.
Steph: In comparison to Latin conventions, we have small teams specializing in a large event. It would be a shame to shut that down.
K. Smith: I would love to see our priority be to increase numbers so this is less of a problem.
Robinson: I think there is a difference between an individual and a team award. Compare to other events where there is both an individual and team recognition (gymnastics). We also don’t recognize school size in our tournaments, so we haven’t been equalizing the advantage for smaller schools/teams.
Hughes-King: “Excluding from sweeps” strikes me as just a blunt instrument and doesn’t account for the considerations. We’ve seen students fail to qualify for nationals in Congress, then enroll in another event that is not their primary and qualify. It’s cloudy to distinguish between a student who is there as a means to win.
M. Smith: Speech is different than others in that students need a different type of planning; they can’t pivot to a new event last minute. The MPA’s intention is to welcome the team, rather than the individual, so excluding from the Sweeps is against the MPA’s intentions.
Robinson: The MPA point is interesting. They’ve given us a lot of leeway in general. I’m meeting with our MPA partner soon and can talk to him. We could come up with a model to distinguish schools by size. That said, regarding the work students put in, I’ve seen plenty of students change pieces last-minute and still succeed. We officers are under the responsibility to communicate about low enrollment events early and often. Similarly, if we continue to struggle with enrollment in certain events, that might be an indicator that the event is no longer of interest to our students.
Parent: Can someone elaborate on how Speech Sweeps is calculated:
Newcomb: This sounds to me like this affects larger, more powerful teams. A low enrollment event might be more welcoming to some students and thereby increase our participation.
Haskell: If I have two cross-country runners who are the best in the state, they don’t count because MPA requires at least 5.
Pellegrini: I, too, experienced this last year. I agree with M. Smith, Newcomb on points of disenfranchisement and promotion of event.
K. Smith: There are legitimate arguments for either side of this debate. Benefits and detriments are based on individual circumstances. I’m personally against cutting a category for low enrollment. It’s our responsibility to recruit. Of course, COVID has made that difficult.
Robinson: I’d be most in favor of school divisions. It could be messy, but maybe not. Maine Drama Festival has done it.
Parent: Recruiting is indeed important. There is a tendency with coaches to prefer or discourage certain events, which only hurts event participation. Let the students drive that more. Extemporaneous Speaking is a prime example. All the events we offer have value. Shoot me an email if you want to learn more about Extemp.
Curry: I always felt it was a reasonable compromise to not eliminate the event, but exclude from Sweeps. One point I’m seeing: If you’re a coach and see the Sweeps trophy lean due to enrollment of certain events, you could encourage your students to balance the enrollment and quality of competition more. It’s an Adam Smith-free market concept.
Denk: I want to clarify that there are two related topics at discussion, so let’s make the distinction. What I’m hearing is that (1) cutting an event is rather unanimously a bad idea and (2) we’re more divided around Sweeps. I like the idea of having our Vice President address with MPA. Thank you for having this conversation with us.
Melanson: We have some events that are close enough and it might be shooting ourselves in the foot for
Action item: Vice President Robinson discuss with our MPA representative to consult and advise on how we ought to manage low enrollment.
During last year’s virtual season, the MFA heard from several for-hire judges from other districts and states. Officials made a quick judgement to not allow them. We want to open it up to the coaches for discussion. We recommend not allowing a virtual hire without having some sort of connection (via a coach, student, or other judge). As always, the risks include:
NOTE: We do encourage virtual hires of people with some sort of social connection.
M. Smith: I don’t at all support random hire. We would not hire unvetted strangers to sub in our classrooms. It presents safety issues—who knows what a judge might say to students, and who knows what they might try to do with kids’ performances—take them and post them somewhere? If my own children were still participating, I would be furious if I found out this were happening.
Hughes-King: From a Congress perspective, we have specialized roles for some of our judges, so we need to qualify that judge and cannot accept a random person.
Robinson: If there is a way to direct these hires to our advantage?
Curry: As President, I receive many of these communications from possible judges. I’ve turned them all away, however some seem to have a quality pedigree, which means I’m not opposed to giving them a choice with vetting.
Denk: There are mechanisms for vetting judges. Tabroom already offers a function to collect judge paradigms. Some of this call have brought up security/fingerprinting considerations. These judges would be for virtual only and, while security concerns don’t disappear, the dynamics change. Schools also treat their security/fingerprinting requirements differently than the next.
Parent: At first, I was adamantly against hiring random judges, however I’m feeling more at ease. Yes, we could ask for recommendation letters and/or require training.
Parlee: One advantage to opening up our judge pools helps balance our biases.
Denk: If I were to summarize, we’re generally in agreement to politely decline, however we want to encourage judges to build a rapport with us.
Kyer: I would ask the technology committee to post a statement to the web site about our position?
M. Smith: I thought we nixed Duo for safety reasons because students shouldn’t be in the same room due to COVID.
Denk: I’m going to speak for the tech committee, so are we ready to try to run virtual Duo? (Let’s try.)
M. Smith: If we’re offering Duo, does that open us up to triple-entry?
Sometimes we like to evaluate the NSDA topics to customize for one reason or another.
Parent: Some students have historically been confused about which topic is running and show up to the tournament with a great surprise. I propose largely sticking with the NSDA topic.
Haskell: To muddy the waters, our first all events tournament coincides with the end of the month (at a topic transition point).
Kyer: It would be more balanced to keep the topics, but adjust the scheduling to run the topics on a more distributed schedule.
Leland: The general LD topic for November/December is employment law and workers’ rights.
Haskell: Let’s keep it simple and go with NSDA topics.
Many thanks to Nick Waldron and Sam Rouse for applying a visual refresh to our web site. They will continue to optimize the new theme over the weeks and months. The overall structure of the site remains the same. If you have feedback, catch a bug, or can’t find something, reach out to the Tech Committee or an officer.
Rouse also refreshed our logo to be more gender inclusive.