{debacle}

I decided to withdraw from the school's debate team yesterday. I then decided to confirm this with Mr. Gavaghan, debate coach, this morning. I had reasons laid out in my head should he have asked. I didn't need to use them:

The debate team (and its apprentices) had a meeting at breaktime this morning. It was then that Gav poised us all the question: To go ahead with participation in the debate competition or to just "can it", in his own words - the underlying reason being a) insufficient preparation time and b) Gav was not pleased that the debate topics came around that late (he got them only last night).

I took the opportunity to express my intention to personally withdraw, but suggested that the rest of the team go ahead with a replacement in my place. The other debaters agreed to go ahead with it. All seemed fine.

However, afterwards, two other debaters expressed to me their intention to quit as well, citing their unwillingness to miss classes - exactly my own personal reason. I believe my quitting had a direct knock-on effect on these two comrades.

With too many positions in the team vacant, and not enough people willing to fill in, and with such a time constraint, the decision was made: SMSA would pull out of this year's competition.

It's a shame, yeah, admittedly. But it was "dying with dignity", rather than dragging a rag-tag team along to MD and then being thrashed by the likes of MS and PTEB, among others. Personally it is disappointing that things had to end this way, and even more so disappointing that it all seemed to have resulted from my pulling out. I wanted more than anything for a strong team from SMSA to have participated, and hopefully someone from SMSA would be selected for Bridge and possibly World's sometime in the future.

Sigh.