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I met Deborah Ketchum almost a decade ago. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't remember me from that moment because it wasn't for another that we became really good friends.
When I returned to teach at my alma mater in 2004, I immediately picked up the mantle of Forensics coach with gusto and enthusiasm. And promptly realized I had no idea how to "manage" a team. I could coach students; I could help them with interping skills and speech writing. But the organizational aspect of coaching was completely new to me.
I took my newly formed team to one of the only invitational tournaments in the area I knew about. It was east of us at a school I had been to only once before, a little single A school (old school VHSL designations) called Randolph Henry. I had never met the coach; I knew my team was fairly green to compete. We went anyway.
I brought enough judges with me that I wasn't needed most rounds. During the start of the second one, I was walking one of the upper hallways, making sure my kids had made it to their correct rooms to compete, and I passed this woman in the hallway. She was clearly in charge: she was checking on rooms, speaking quickly to a few judges here and there. I greeted her and briefly considered asking if she needed any help with anything but I concluded quickly enough, and luckily enough for me, that whatever she might ask me to do tournament-wise I probably had no ability to do since I had no clue how to run a team, much less a tournament.
Needless to say, the experience was fantastic and none of my team broke into the final round. This wasn't a surprise to me but as teenagers my kids were a bit chagrined. And without realizing it some things were set in motion over the next decade.
Fast forward about three years. E.C. Glass joined the local Forensics league, as a practice route to the harder VHSL circuit. And I ran into Deborah again. First, I simply knew her as one of the people who ran the tab room while I judged. Tab people are funny: they are stressed about things that seem unimportant to others: four poetry kids in one room and six in the other, a missing kid who is not on the drop list, a room without a judge. All I knew was that I had neither the nerves nor the resolve to be a tab room person.
But as I got to know more of the coaches in this wild and crazy world of Forensics, and I had more conversations with Deborah, I realized that it wasn't that she was so much different from me as she had just learned to "organize", to "manage". So I learned from her. I watched her interact with her team in brief spurts. I especially watched her work with other Forensics coaches from other schools. Pieces began to fall into place.
Years rolled and I found myself helping in that crazy, hair-pulling tab room. And before I had gotten a sense of what was happening, I was suddenly in there with Deborah and Mark Ingerson and others helping RUN this crazy thing. I was checking on rooms, fixing disasters, dealing with technical website stuff and people stuff. I had learned in that most ordinary of ways: without realizing it.
About four years ago, I was brought back to that very first competition, way out at Deborah's school of Randolph Henry. Back then, we had left that school and my team reassured themselves that they were going to be prepared for future competitions, they were going to play to WIN. As I sat in the tab room with Deborah so many years after that and we talked about the competitive nature of high school, much less Forensics, she brought me up short with a very simple questions.
"Do you press your kids to win at these little tournaments in the fall?" These local competitions were small, a single evening, two rounds, just some quick judge feedback. Do you press them... I knew the right answer was "no". I knew that it was absurd, demonstrably silly to rally a team for VICTORY at a little practice tournament, which is essentially what this was. And even as I said something like "not, really" I knew I was telling at best a partial truth, probably more like a face-saving lie. For the truth was I had pushed in certain ways for my kids to WIN at these things. I don't think I ever made winning the more important thing than learning. In fact, often I tell my students that they'll know the kids in the room that are better, more polished. Watch them, I say, learn from them. They will teach you much.
But I did put pressure on the winning thing. Too much pressure. A full Saturday VHSL tournament was different. But at these things: be kind, be friendly. More: find the kids in your room that seem really scared and out of their element and greet them. Make them feel better. Help them enjoy their time competing rather than trying to defeat them. That adversarial mindset was silly. Isn't the art of speaking well inherently the act of building a room up? Of connecting with the people all around you? You can't do that when the room is a battlefield.
I suspect Deborah doesn't realize the impact she has had on me in relation to all this; she would probably dismiss it as not that big of a deal. But to me it's huge. She was and is still my professional reality check when my ego starts writing checks that I can't personally cash. When I know she will be at a tournament, I feel a sense of relief inside. I know that however far south the tournament might go from one of a hundred different mistakes, she will find a solution. Might not be pretty but it will help the tournament go on and most likely the rest of the people there will never know there was a problem. I've learned that from her too.
Deborah Ketchum is my great friend. I have not had the chance to see her yet this school year but I know that where these local tournaments are progressing, she is there (with others) making the thing turn without flaw.
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