I Should Have Won: Addressing Discontentment with Judge’s Decisions
Does this sound familiar? You just finished a tournament, and maybe it went well, perhaps it didn’t. You’re reading through your debate ballots on the ride home, specifically through your judges' sections on Reason For Decision (RFD). What you find there are the dumbest things in existence. Judges voted based on a random example they liked, once when your evidence was questionable even though you had a dozen other valid quotes that said the same thing, or worst of all you lost based on your opponent misquoting you in the 2AR.
We’ve all been there. I’ve spent far more time and effort being angry at judges. But last year I had a change of heart. We’ll examine exactly why you shouldn’t be upset with your judges through three ideas: the Mission Statement, The Judges, and Responsibility.
What is the NCFCA mission statement? I hope you have this memorized, you have to make Ms. Shipe proud. “We exist to challenge and equip ambassadors for Christ to communicate truth with integrity and grace.” There is a lot to unpack in that statement, but there are a few main things I want to focus on. The ultimate goal of NCFCA is not to win debate rounds. Sorry, but we all knew that in the back of our minds. It certainly can feel that way sometimes, but the point of debate is to equip you. Equip you to win right? Wrong. Equip you to communicate truth. The mission of NCFCA isn’t to be an outlet for you to force your agenda of looking good to your peers on to. It’s deeper than that. It’s about learning how to communicate well. Take the ten ballots you are the most mad about. How many of them did you lose? Probably all of them, at least most of them. That shows it’s probably not the judging quality you’re worried about, or how well you were communicating, it’s the fact that you lost that’s bothering you. And I’m not just preaching to you, I’m horrible at this as well. But we have to remember the judges and their perspectives.
The judges are great people. They're volunteering to help you. So why do we then turn around and bash them behind their backs? Especially the poor parent judges. They sacrifice so much for all of us sore losers to complain about how bad they are at making decisions. By your standards they should have made a better decision, but in their mind they were right. And that’s the key to overcoming negative attitudes about the debate outcomes. Remember your place. The judge is the judge, you are the competitor. Your job is to communicate, not to decide that you did a better job than your opponent. One time there was a parent judge I was talking with, and they said something that has stuck with me ever since. “The point of NCFCA isn’t to teach adults how to be good judges. The point of NCFCA is to teach competitors how to be good competitors.”
This goes back to responsibility. As Christians, we don’t tell God “You’re a bad judge, my standards (where I’m probably going to win) are much better.” That’s blasphemous. Look. You lost. Skill issue. Suck it up, and do better. Come up with an equally good example, don’t use that sketchy evidence, and become so convincing that not even 2AR abuse can defeat you. But don’t blame the judges. In the real world, the people judging you will be less logical than your current judges. In the real world, winning arguments could be so much more important. In the real world, complaining won’t solve anything. Take responsibility, take your judges seriously, and remember where the mission statement speaks of grace. Give grace as you have received it.
Judges can make weird decisions, but that doesn’t mean we should get upset. NCFCA is not a call to be pampered, but to challenge. Accept the challenge and the responsibility, and you’ll go far.
