The 3NR

Ever wonder who has been the best speaker in the country over the course of the season? While the National Debate Coaches’ Association Baker Award recognizes the year long excellence of teams, no such award exists to recognize the excellence of individual debaters. The following is an attempt to fill that gap with a statistical analysis of the speaker points and speaker awards earned by the nation’s top policy debaters during the 2009-2010 season.

Methodology

The performance of individual debaters is assessed in each round through the assignment of speaker points and at each tournament through the tabulation of speaker awards. A statistical analysis of the season’s top individual speakers can therefore be conducted based on either or both of these criteria: total points and speaker awards. In order to determine this season’s best speakers, these criteria were analyzed separately; it is left up to individual interpretation how much weight to give to one as compared to the other.

Approach #1—Speaker Points

Speaker points were collected for the eight octafinals bid tournaments—Greenhill, St. Mark’s, Glenbrooks, Blake, MBA, Emory, Harvard, and Berkeley. Each debater’s total number of speaker points at each tournament was used for these calculations, not their adjusted (“high-low”) totals.

Points were calculated for all debaters that finished in the top ten at one or more octafinals bid tournaments. The total number of speaker points accumulated by each of these debaters was divided by the number of rounds in which they competed. The maximum number of rounds that any one debater could have participated in was 45; Andrew Markoff of Bronx Science and Christian Steckler of Bishop Guertin were the only two debaters to achieve that total (Laura Johnson of Saint Paul Central competed in 44).

Points for the St. Mark’s Heart of Texas Invitational were normalized from the 100 point scale to the traditional 30 point scale. This was more difficult than first thought because the 100 point scale is not just the 30 point scale multiplied by 3.333; the numbers had to be manually translated using the “RKS” scale so that 85 = 28.5, 90 = 29.0, etc. The normalized numbers were calculated to the second decimal place (for example, Ellis Allen’s 554 (92.33 points per debate) was translated to 29.23).

Because data for the St. Mark’s tournament may be unreliable, a separate ranking was calculated based only on the other seven tournaments.

Highest Average Speaker Points—Minimum 12 Rounds

1. Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (28.87733333, 45 rounds)
2. Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (28.86216216, 37 rounds)
3. David Mullins—Westlake (28.85625, 32 rounds)
4. Ellis Allen—Westminster (28.83025641, 39 rounds)
5. Will Thibeau—Glenbrook South (28.75263158, 38 rounds)
6. Andrew Arsht—Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (28.73684211, 19 rounds)
7. Thomas Hodgman—Pembroke Hill (28.73538462, 13 rounds)
8. Matthew Pesce—Woodward (28.69210526, 38 rounds)
9. Daniel Taylor—Westminster (28.69179487, 39 rounds)
10. Alex Miles—St. Mark’s (28.66666667, 18 rounds)

Highest Average Speaker Points—Minimum 24 Rounds

1. Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (28.87733333, 45 rounds)
2. Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (28.86216216, 37 rounds)
3. David Mullins—Westlake (28.85625, 32 rounds)
4. Ellis Allen—Westminster (28.83025641, 39 rounds)
5. Will Thibeau—Glenbrook South (28.75263158, 38 rounds)
6. Matthew Pesce—Woodward (28.69210526, 38 rounds)
7. Daniel Taylor—Westminster (28.69179487, 39 rounds)
8. Reid Ehrlich-Quinn—Damien (28.664375, 32 rounds)
9. John Baker—Westlake (28.65875, 32 rounds)
10. Becca Rothfeld—Georgetown Day (28.62121212, 33 rounds)

Highest Average Speaker Points Not Including St. Mark’s—Minimum 12 Rounds

1. Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (28.84615385, 39 rounds)
2. Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (28.80645161, 31 rounds)
3. David Mullins—Westlake (28.78846154, 26 rounds)
4. Ellis Allen—Westminster (28.75757576, 33 rounds)
5. Andrew Arsht—Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (28.73684211, 19 rounds)
6. Will Thibeau—Glenbrook South (28.734375, 32 rounds)
7. Alex Miles—St. Mark’s (28.66666667, 18 rounds)
8. Danny Bernick—Henry Sibley (28.64285714, 14 rounds)
9. Matthew Pesce—Woodward (28.625, 32 rounds)
10. (tie) Becca Rothfeld—Georgetown Day (28.62121212, 33 rounds)
11. (tie) Daniel Taylor—Westminster (28.62121212, 33 rounds)

Highest Average Points At A Single Tournament

1. 29.23: Ellis Allen—Westminster (St. Mark’s)
2. 29.16: Andrew Arsht—Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (Berkeley)
3. 29.15: (tie) David Mullins—Westlake (St. Mark’s)
4. 29.15: (tie) Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (St. Mark’s)
5. 29.08: (tie) Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (St. Mark’s)
6. 29.08: (tie) Daniel Taylor—Westminster (St. Mark’s)
7. 29.05: Matthew Pesce—Woodward (St. Mark’s)
8. 29.01: Thomas Hodgman—Pembroke Hill (St. Mark’s)
9. 29.00: (tie) Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (Blake, Emory)
10. 29.00: (tie) Ellis Allen—Westminster (Blake)
11. 29.00: (tie) Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (Berkeley)

Highest Average Points At A Single Tournament—Not Including St. Mark’s

1. 29.16: Andrew Arsht—Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (Berkeley)
2. 29.00: (tie) Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (Blake, Emory)
3. 29.00: (tie) Ellis Allen—Westminster (Blake)
4. 29.00: (tie) Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (Berkeley)
5. 28.92: (tie) David Mullins—Westlake (Glenbrooks)
6. 28.92: (tie) Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (Glenbrooks)
7. 28.92: (tie) Becca Rothfeld—Georgetown Day (Glenbrooks)
8. 28.91: (tie) Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (Emory)
9. 28.91: (tie) Matthew Pesce—Woodward (Emory)
10. 28.91: (tie) Campbell Haynes—Montgomery Bell (Berkeley)
11. 28.91: (tie) Mario Feola—Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (Berkeley)
12. 28.85: (tie) Will Thibeau—Glenbrook South (Blake)
13. 28.85: (tie) Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (Harvard)
14. 28.83: (tie) David Mullins—Westlake (Greenhill)
15. 28.83: (tie) Alex Miles—St. Mark’s (Emory)

Approach #2—Speaker Awards

While an assessment of a debater’s speaker points over the course of the season is undoubtedly one of the most effective measures of their performance, the resulting data does not account for differences in relative point scales between tournaments. If the judging pool at a given tournament is more generous than average, the points that a debater accumulates at that tournament may be artificially inflated. (Adjusting individual speaker points based on the mean or median speaker point distributions at each tournament might be an effective way to correct this but it is beyond the scope of this author’s mathematical skills.)

Instead of measuring each individual’s total speaker points, this alternative approach measures the value of the speaker awards they earned at each tournament compared with their peers. Once again, data was collected from the eight octafinals bid tournaments—in total, 37 debaters earned at least one top ten speaker award and 20 earned more than one.

Values were assigned to each speaker award on a scale from 1 to 10: the top speaker received 10 points, the second speaker received 9 points, and so on. The total “share” of the speaker award total was then calculated both as a gross value (total speaker award share) and as a net value (total speaker award share divided by the number of tournaments the debater attended). Winning the top speaker award at seven tournaments (the maximum that a single debater could attend) would earn an individual 70 points.

Most Top Ten Speaker Awards

1. Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (7)
2. Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (6)
3. (tie) David Mullins—Westlake (5)
4. (tie) Ellis Allen—Westminster (5)
5. (tie) Will Thibeau—Glenbrook South (5)
6. (tie) Ben Chang—Edgemont (3)
7. (tie) Daniel Taylor—Westminster (3)
8. (tie) Ira Slomski-Pritz—New Trier (3)
9. (tie) Matthew Pesce—Woodward (3)
10. (tie) Misael Gonzalez—Whitney Young (3)

Highest Speaker Award Share—Total

1. Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (51)
2. Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (48)
3. David Mullins—Westlake (32)
4. Ellis Allen—Westminster (31)
5. Will Thibeau—Glenbrook South (26)
6. Matthew Pesce—Woodward (20)
7. Andrew Arsht—Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (19)
8. (tie) Daniel Taylor—Westminster (17)
9. (tie) Alex Miles—St. Mark’s (17)
10. Kevin Hirn—Whitney Young (16)

Highest Speaker Award Share—Average Per Tournament Attended

1. Layne Kirshon—Kinkaid (8.00 average shares, 6 tournaments)
2. Andrew Markoff—Bronx Science (7.29 average shares, 7 tournaments)
3. David Mullins—Westlake (6.40 average shares, 5 tournaments)
4. Andrew Arsht—Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (6.33 average shares, 3 tournaments)
5. Alex Miles—St. Mark’s (5.67 average shares, 3 tournaments)
6. Ellis Allen—Westminster (5.17 average shares, 6 tournaments)
7. Will Thibeau—Glenbrook South (4.33 average shares, 6 tournaments)
8. Matthew Pesce—Woodward (3.33 average shares, 6 tournaments)
9. Becca Rothfeld—Georgetown Day (3.00 average shares, 5 tournaments)
10. Daniel Taylor—Westminster (2.83 average shares, 6 tournaments)

Conclusions

Regardless of one’s preferred approach, Bronx Science’s Andrew Markoff and Kinkaid’s Layne Kirshon have been the season’s top individual speakers. Markoff has earned the highest average speaker points, the most speaker awards, the highest gross share of speaker awards, and three of the top ten highest totals at a single tournament (four if St. Mark’s is excluded). Kirshon, on the other hand, has earned the highest net speaker award share (averaging third speaker at 6 tournaments) and is second in highest average speaker points, total speaker awards, and gross speaker award share while posting two of the top ten highest totals at a single tournament.

So who wins? After the results of the NDCA Championships and the Tournament of Champions are included in the data, we’ll find out.

Please report any errors to the author either via email or by posting a comment.

Bill Batterman

Bill is the Associate Director of Debate at Woodward Academy. The 2009 Wisconsin Debate Coaches’ Association Coach of the Year and 2010 National Debate Coaches’ Association Educator of the Year, Bill is an instructor at the Georgetown Debate Seminar and the Spartan Debate Institute at Michigan State University.

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