Last weekend, I accompanied several of my debaters to an urban debate league national championship in Chicago. As the director of the Boston Debate League, I rarely have the time (or inclination) to judge debates myself. However, I did judge a few rounds while in Chicago. In particular, I had the pleasure of judging a young man from Kansas City named Sean Easterwood (pictured at left with his coach, Jane Rinehart, and administrators from the Kansas City Urban Debate League).
Sean was one of the best speakers I’ve seen, and I’ve seen thousands. When Sean won top speaker at the tournament, I was not surprised. When a reporter from the Kansas City Star called me about an article he was writing on Sean, I was not surprised. (Well, I wasn’t surprised that a reporter would do want to write an article about Sean. I was surprised that he had bothered to track down Sean’s judges from the national championship).
I had trouble putting into words what exactly it was that I liked about Sean, which is rare for me, but the reporter did a nice job of turning my rambling into a coherent thought:
Thirty-four teams from 19 debate leagues across the nation battled it out in Chicago last weekend at the Chase Urban Debate National Championship. [Sean] earned a $2,500 scholarship for snaring the top individual award.
And he did it while attacking some of the hectic, rapid-fire tactics of debate even as he showed he could dominate that style, said judge Andrew Brokos.
“He was charismatic and principled,” Brokos said. “He had all the skills … to play within the game while getting the judges to acknowledge his criticism of the game.”
Judging Sean was also exciting for me because he debates for Kansas City Central, the debate team that was the subject of one of my favorite books, Cross-Ex. Even if I weren’t deeply immersed in the world of urban debate leagues, I would have loved this white journalist’s account of following, and eventually coaching, the largely black team as they “challenge[d] the debate community on race, power, and education.”
Jane Rinehart, who coaches at Central and was one of the “stars” of the book, has apparently taken Sean into her home as well and is now his legal guardian. The article is pretty vague regarding what happened, but it sounds like his family just up and took off on him while he was away at a debate tournament:
That’s how, at 17, you bear the weight of having walked up the steps to your home after returning from another out-of-town tournament and finding the window blinds gone, the furniture gone…
This is my favorite thing about the urban debate league scene, and what makes it so different from poker. Virtually everyone I meet, both students and coaches/administrators, are extraordinary and inspiring people who have done, are doing, or surely will do great things. It’s incredibly uplifting to spend time in their company. Compare that to the usual lineup at a 2/5 NL table at Foxwoods, and you’ll understand why I don’t enjoy live poker.