A debate judge told me my opening speech sounded like a TED talk and it stung because he was right

Rowan Lewis · 2026-10-17T18:55:05.381293+00:00

I coach the debate team at a small college in Ohio and we had a scrimmage against a bigger school back in September. After my student gave her opening speech on campus speech codes, one of the other coaches pulled me aside and said the whole thing felt like a TED talk, all polish and no real clash, and that our team was losing rounds because we were scared to actually disagree. I pushed back at first because I figured he was just mad we beat his team twice, but he was right and it bugged me for a week. So I changed how we prep, no more opening statements that sound like a keynote, she now has to name the other side's best argument in the first 30 seconds and hit it straight on. We dropped from 9 minutes of scripted content to about 5, and the extra time goes to back and forth. We won 3 of our next 4 rounds and the feedback sheets finally mention our lines of clash instead of our delivery. It's weird admitting a rival coach in a parking lot knew our problem better than our own judge sheets did. Has anyone else had a coach or judge give them a note that stung but turned out to be the thing that fixed their team?

Free To Speak

Loading…

A debate judge told me my opening speech sounded like a TED talk and it stung because he was right | Campus Speech Wars - Free To Speak