Random hotel room parties at debate state? Awww yeeeaahhhh. I'm the dude in the blue under armor.
Pretty cool trip, I thought. Had to go as a non-competitor due to my Public Forum partner becoming ineligible, but oh well. There's always next year to win I guess.
Here's a good part of the debators from my city (missing the private school kids/a few people that were in rounds) at the high school the competition was hosted at. Some people are in casual clothes because they were done with rounds, and some people had to come in formal gear every day despite not competing because they were technically entered as a coach and not a competitor (hint: that was me
![Frown :( :(](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
)
Anyway, awesome story time from the trip. So me and this guy Brian are bored the first night of the competition. The food the school is serving sucks, the line to the snack bar is long (they had Domino's too, but I didn't want to wait thirty minutes for a few slices of pizza), and we don't feel like spending money. Being the two morally sound guys we are, we decide that hey! What if we went to a random house in the neighborhood and told them our coach forgot our meal money back in Austin (despite living in El Paso) and that our team sent us out to try and get snacks to eat while we wait for the final rounds of competition to be over?
So we walk out to a house - it had a bumper sticker of the school the competition was at, so we figured they'd be open to a few high schoolers - ring the doorbell and the lady answers. She looks confused, so we explain that our coach forgot our meal money, and despite how rude it was, we really needed to get some sort of snack for out team. The lady asks for identification so we show her our TFA pins (Texas Forensic Association, the debate league our schools are in), we introduce ourselves, and she goes to get food.
She comes back with a few Dr. Peppers and a huge bag of chips. Score! So we thank her, made some small talk (she said she wanted to introduce us to her daughter, but she was upstairs getting ready for school the next day... guess "Tyler Jackson" and "Kris Cooper" made a real impact on her!), and returned to the school as champions.
And here's a picture of me with the bag of chips.
So yeah, pretty fun trip overall. Wish I could've competed, but oh well. **** happens I guess. Next year!