As debate captain Damian Knowles crouched down to listen to a debate student’s concerns about their case, more hands shot up all over the room. Soon, Knowles found himself scurrying across the room from one student to another with very little time to work on his own debate cases during the weekly debate practice.
After the decade-long coach Laura Dearth left her position, Elizabeth Simpson, despite having no prior experience, has stepped in as the new debate coach, causing the debate captains to take on more responsibilities than before.
“I’d say one of the big stresses, especially not having an actual reliable coach, is that before the team could either go to our former coach and then the captain, but now the only option is to go to the captain,” Knowles said. “So the obligation and stress in the captain’s role is to not disappoint your members.”
Simpson said that the captains have taken over the debate team.
“They pretty much run the show,” Simpson said. “That’s been great because I get the credit for it, but they do all the work.”
With the debate captains getting used to lots of things automatically being done by the previous coach, Knowles said that it has been an adjustment.
“Some things that we took for granted we were unable to have this year,” Knowles said. “But it has allowed for more freer movement in regards and not have much stress.”
The change was sudden, with the debate captains given very little heads up in advance about the departure of the former debate coach.
“We were sad about her departure,” Knowles said. “But Ms. Simpson is very good at cooperating and hearing out what the captains say and willing to take advice which is always good.”
The debate team had to adjust their expectations from their past experiences.
“She’s less experienced, but she’s been trying her best to get caught up to speed,” said debate captain Isabelle Agarwal. “A lot of kids may expect more of her because of our last coach’s decade-long experience.”
The captains have coordinated with each other in order to keep up with the responsibilities and lead the debate team.
“We started to coordinate and come up with that dynamic,” said debate captain Jessica Nwosu. “We will come to a decision that will communicate that to Simpson, so she’s okay with that.”
Even with the efforts in coordinating and compromising each other’s schedules to accommodate everyone, some debate captains have been absent from practices.
“We all have things to do and we all made those adjustments to make time for debate,” Knowles said. “They just didn’t put debate first within their busy schedule, putting more pressure on the other captains with responsibilities that shouldn’t be theirs.”
Despite the hurdles, Knowles said that Simpson is always willing to help and has hope for her improvement through experience.
“Since she doesn’t have experience as a debate coach, there’s not really much she can do for us for now,” Knowles said. “The amount of time to bring her back up to the level of our former coach may take a while but I think that’s always doable.”
