Lessons in Losses (You Can’t Win ‘Em All)
THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON DECEMBER 1, 2025; IT WAS LAST UPDATED ON MARCH 15, 2026.
A few weeks ago, I earned 1st place in the Arkansas Tech University’s debate, speech, and ‘civil discourse’ professional division categories.
Jessica got me that tie.
The week before that, UCLA mock trial took 1st place at the University of Texas at Austin’s undergraduate tournament.
Those are the sort of wins that you like to publicize, so, there, I’ve publicized ‘em. But let’s switch gears and bring up the losses.
I lost in the semifinal round of a different adult debate tournament immediately before that win. A different UCLA squad lost a close round to Rhodes College at the Texas tournament. No person and no program wins all the time.
Ain’t No Such Thing As Perfect
Usain Bolt lost three races at the Olympics and World Championships and an estimated 15-20 times in career-level contests. Simone Biles took silver at the 2024 Paris Olympics and fifth in the balance beam final. Michael Jordan lost 366 regular season and 60 playoff games. Magnus Carlsen has lost chess games nearly 50 times. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt lost in a Senate primary.
Nobody’s THAT good at debate, mock trial, Toastmasters, or anything else. Everybody’s beatable in front of the right crowd at the right time of day. So am I.
In speech rounds (high school and the Professional Speech and Debate Association), I ranked in the top two out of seven roughly 90% of the time, but ranked 1st outright in only 67% of rounds.
In mock trial (American Mock Trial Association), I won two national championships, but only won 67% (again) across all four years.
As a debater, I have a 81% win rate.
As a mock trial coach, my students have also won 81% of their rounds; as a speech coach, my students have a 89% entry-to-award ratio in the 2025-2026 season.
These are all good numbers and I’m proud of them. But, yes, I can lose. And I do. That’s a good thing. If I didn’t, I would have a much harder time relating to seminal experiences of losing and learning.
A coach/friend of mine shared this with me: “My students, like myself at their age, really struggle to see the difference between their loss of a round and their loss of personal quality or value. In debate, you win or lose with your ideas, which is inherently intimate and can be challenging for them to separate.”
To keep myself accountable as a learner and communicator, and to give students like those some learning opportunities and perspective, I’m going to update this blog post every time I don’t win a professional debate round.
Since I have a goal of winning at least five more national championships in IPDA (bringing my total to seven, since the current record is six), I expect this post to get pretty long.
The Adult Debate League
IPDA (the International Public Debate Association), unlike other debater formats, has inconsistency and randomness baked in its bones.
The topics are never tested for ‘balance’ (giving equal ground to the affirmative and negative side); you can have obviously skewed topics like “We should encourage more civic engagement.”
The judges never disclose their preferences before a round or verbally explain their decisions after rounds.
There is no mechanism to verify the evidence provided by either side, which means that power-tagging (claiming your source says something more than what it does) is common, and debaters are mostly bound by an honor system that some ignore.
Yeah, it’s tough. But it also represents how real world communication goes. You might find yourself having to defend unpopular positions in front of people with unclear expectations. You might get frustrated by people voting on feelings over facts, or not double-checking claims made by politicians or pundits.
But becoming resilient in the face of this—and overcoming it—is key to building real confidence.
How I’ve Lost
There are four ways I can fail to earn my judge’s ballot:
My striking (when my opponent and I determine which of our five options to debate, did I let a bad topic for my side slip through?)
My substance (was my content persuasive?)
My structure (did I order/express my content clearly?)
My style (did my vocal inflection, body language, and rhetorical choices enhance or detract from my performance?).
I’ll evaluate each of those factors below. Some of this is from judges’ comments. Most is from my own reflection.
Affirming “Stephen King had a greater cultural impact than Alfred Hitchcock.”
Striking: I don’t love this topic for the affirmative. Cultural impact is hard to measure; we don’t live in a monoculture. My opponent rightly ran a comparing “apples and oranges” argument that our judge found persuasive. In retrospect, while I chose the topic because I’m a huge Stephen King fan, sometimes passion about the source material isn’t enough.
Substance: I was completely wrong on one point (I thought Stephen King was honored with a Congressional medal; that was Stephen Hawking). I also wasn’t clear enough on my narrative that King has had a greater impact across genres, nationalities, and mediums; I should have made those ideas my three arguments.
Structure: I wasn’t particularly clear in my closing speech when responding to my opponent’s key voting issues.
Style: I was a little aggressive in cross when challenging evidence that I didn’t think supported my opponent’s claims.
Affirming “Definitional debates are more harmful than beneficial.”
Striking: I also don’t love this topic for the affirmative, but it came down to this and a silly topic about if Waffle House employees would defeat other restaurant employees in a fight. The problem is that definitional debates, while annoying, are often helpful in the real world—they determine Supreme Court precedent, key terms of business agreements, relationship statuses, and more. I don’t think I should have picked this.
Substance: I tried to make the round about definitional arguments in an IPDA setting. I had four points, but the main thesis was that debating definitions when we have such little time to speak saps the round of its educational value and reduces discussions of substance. This was fine.
Structure: I didn’t allocate my time well this round, making strategic concessions on a few of my own points. I think I stretched myself too thin by arguing about too many nuances in IPDA definitional debates.
Style: This is where I lost the round. Instead of taking things slow and easy, I incorrectly intuited that two of my three judges were comfortable with a faster, more aggressive style. IPDA normally has two or three points; I blasted through four of them. If I had constrained myself to the best two out of those four, I would have had more time to refute my opponent. This round was winnable at the beginning, but I lost it by going for too many ideas.
Negating “Price caps are a beneficial economic tool.”
Striking: The topic’s phrasing slightly favors the affirmative side, since the common understanding of tools is that they do something, but don’t need to do everything. If the affirmative can show there are niche situations where capping the price of something like insulin is useful, then they win. My opponent understood and took advantage of this; I underestimated him.
Substance: I had plenty of evidence that price caps disrupt the supply/demand curve and was well-prepared to refute my opponent’s stock arguments. The problem was I didn’t engage on the framing level enough. I needed to argue that, if a tool only works in a couple instances even though it’s designed to work for far more instances, you would return it to the store; for example, if you had a hammer that was supposed to work on all standard nails but it broke all types of nails but one, it would not be beneficial. A lot of IPDA is about the common understanding of metaphors, and I didn’t do enough of this.
Structure: No issues.
Style: No real issues, but since this was a Halloween tournament and my opponent was costumed, I should have had at least a little costume instead of a standard blazer and slacks. No need to lose the vibe check.
Affirming “Convicted felons should not get bail.”
Striking: This is a tough but winnable affirmative. The negative will argue that this is an extreme position; there are some felons who are not active and present dangers (some white-collar or nonviolent criminals, for instance). The affirmative has to argue that the overall threats to society from repeat offenders outweigh the edge cases, and that those individuals can always appeal. I generally don’t like being on the ‘extreme/absolute’ side of a topic.
Substance: My opponent had good evidence about prison and jail overcrowding that I couldn’t contend with. I had more knowledge about the legal protections afforded to the accused, even without bail. The problem is how I chose to scope the round, which was ‘convicted VIOLENT felons.’ My opponent ran an abuse case against that scoping, and the judge voted on it. The problem is that, in the IPDA constitution, a definition/scoping challenge is not resolved by voting down the allegedly abusive team; you simply use the counter-definitions instead. I did not make that clear (“Even if you think it is abusive, I can still win under the ‘convicted nonviolent felons’ framing”).
Structure: No problems.
Style: When my opponent came in hot with the abuse case, I think I lost some momentum and tried to play it off too cool instead of fighting fire with fire. If I had been clear that this case was not abusive, that even if it was abusive that’s not an automatic win for either side, and that my opponent was trying to make that the issue in the round instead of debating substance, I think I would have won.
Negating “The Barbie Movie (2023) oversimplified feminism.”
Striking: This is Affirmative-skewed because, yes, almost every non-documentary film will simplify a huge cultural movement. My strategy was to draw the judges’ attention to the surprising amount of depth and deconstruction of capitalism and masculinity inside the film. I think I did as well as I could there, but I didn’t have enough to refute the lack of meaningful intersectionality in the film (a big part of feminism’s third and fourth waves).
Substance: I pushed a lot on ‘simplified’ versus ‘oversimplified,’ but I think I missed the key question. If my opponent was unable to give me an example of a film that did NOT ‘oversimplify’ a cultural movement, that would mean my opponent was holding media to an impossible, unreasonable standard. Instead, I kept pushing him on which wave of feminism he claimed was being oversimplified—fine, but not the knock out blow. I also missed a real opportunity to call out a piece of misquoted evidence; he claimed that America Ferrera and the whole cast had disavowed the film, which is plainly false. I thought the judges recognized that, but didn’t spend enough time attacking it.
Structure: I was a little in my head this round because of a big work call happening literally the minute after the round ended. It messed with my time allocation; I finished around 20 seconds early.
Style: I was charismatic and fun. No issues.
Negating “Peaceful revolutions are better than violent revolutions in the long term.”
Striking: This claim is probably true, so it’s Affirmative-tilted. There’s plenty of evidence that peaceful revolutions are becoming less effective, but that doesn’t mean the alternative is more effective. Still, a winnable topic with enough pushing for the Affirmative to provide examples of purely peaceful revolutions (spoiler alert — most examples you can think of had ongoing, concurrent violence).
Substance: I found a lot of good evidence here and was prepared to beat my opponent’s examples one at a time. No issues.
Structure: I think I could have labeled my final voting issues more clearly, demonstrating that: 1 - Peaceful revolutions don’t work, 2 - If they don’t work, there’s no long term success, 3 - Violence is necessary to create peaceful conditions. I was a bit too glib in how I phrased this in round (for a reason I’ll explain below).
Style: This is a tricky one. I knew going into this round that, win or lose, I was guaranteed to advance to elimination rounds in first place. So my strategy was to be as likable as possible, so I would also be guaranteed the first place speaker award. I spent a lot of time complimenting my opponent (sincerely; he deserves it — great guy) to help make the judge feel comfortable giving us both perfect speaker points, and ended my final speech early instead of going scorched earth with a demand to vote for me. So was this a round-winning performance? No. But I was going for a different win condition.
Affirming “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Striking: I could have gone for a very winnable policy or international relations topic, but I had just debated three of those in the last four rounds and was tired. This quote also reads like an absolute claim. “Cannot stand” sets a high burden. A house divided against itself can be weakened or unstable while still technically standing. That makes this a non-intuitive affirmative.
Substance: I gave multiple historical examples where unresolved internal division led to national collapse and paired them with psychological explanations for why factionalism accelerates decline. I liked my case. The problem was that I overestimated the judges’ familiarity with the quotation and did not spend enough time clearly defining what counted as a “house” or what “cannot stand” meant. I fell back on a bad habit of contextualizing my definitions instead of cleanly establishing them. Wrong move. My opponent also won several examples about division in Latin America, which is probably my weakest IR knowledge area.
Structure: Good. No issues.
Style: I received top speaker points here. No issues.
Affirming “The Last Airbender is a better movie than Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief.”
Striking: I was messing around here and intentionally went for a meme round. I could have debated “movies are better than TV shows,” which is a very balanced topic, but I chose to affirm that one of the worst movies of all time is a better hate-watching experience than a mediocre, middle-of-the-road film. This could have worked with the right judge vibe. Respectfully, we had a very experienced judge who took the comparison seriously, which made this a poor strategic choice.
Substance: The affirmative here is objectively wrong. I tried to analogize The Last Airbender to Sharknado, The Room, and Snakes on a Plane. “So bad it’s good.” That argument is fun, but it is obviously a stretch when the topic asks for “better” in a conventional sense.
Structure: No issues. I had clean coverage of both sides and pre-empted most of the negative case. I did not sufficiently pre-empt the whitewashing argument, which clearly cuts against the affirmative and ended up being decisive.
Style: The judge was laughing throughout the round, and I received top speaker points. No issues here. I was energetic, clear, and very engaged. This was a stylistic win paired with a strategic loss.
Negating “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” — César A. Cruz
This one is funny in hindsight.
Striking: I could have forced a very easy negation on a policy topic about packing the Supreme Court and eliminated this quote entirely. Instead, I chose this because it felt more interesting. I also looked up our judge beforehand and saw she had a background in the arts, so I assumed she would appreciate a round like this. That assumption shaped everything that followed.
Substance: I had a pretty comical misunderstanding of my judge. Based on stray comments I overheard, I expected she would want a highly technical debate, so I ran a topicality argument about the meaning of the word “should.” I later found out she had experience as a speech judge but this was her first week judging debate. Complete misread. The winning negative argument was much simpler. Asking art to do both of these things simultaneously is not desirable most of the time. My opponent had examples of art doing one or the other, but not both at once. I should have leaned into that clarity instead of getting cute with a topicality shell.
Structure: Fine. In retrospect, this should have been framed around three key questions instead of traditional voting issues in my final negative speech.
Style: Because I thought this judge would care less about presentation, I was more casual than polished in cross-examination. That likely cost me ethos points. I also do not want to short-change my opponent. He was well-researched, thoughtful, and especially strong in pushing back against the topicality shell.
Affirming “The United States federal government should form a permanent Senate committee on AI.”
This was a good round for me. It was probably the most well-attended round of the year in terms of observers (fully packed room), and several people expressed admiration afterward. Walking out, I felt comfortably ahead. In retrospect, I see more negative paths to the ballot than I acknowledged in the moment.
Striking: I could have taken a far more affirmative-skewed topic about China’s economy collapsing sooner rather than later. That would have given me significant latitude, and I am well-researched there. Instead, I chose this topic because I wanted to model a straightforward cost-benefit policy debate for the observers.
Substance: I made the arguments I needed to win in front of most NPDA-style judges who evaluate through an offense-defense paradigm. I established the game-changing societal impact of AI. I addressed the lack of focused federal AI legislation. I explained the unique institutional powers of Senate committees to hold hearings, subpoena witnesses, develop expertise, and fast-track legislation. I identified environmental concerns, pollution in minority communities, and job displacement as areas requiring a federal backstop. However, as someone who defaults to a cooperative federalism mindset, my opponents’ well-delivered states are good by themselves arguments did not intuitively register as powerful to me. I assume federal and state action can coexist. Some judges clearly did not share that assumption. They were more receptive to “states will handle it themselves” arguments. In retrospect, I should have spent more time explicitly articulating why redundancy is not wasteful. A seat belt and an airbag can coexist. I did not make that intuition explicit enough.
Structure: I felt strong here, particularly in my middle speech where I covered more than ten arguments in three minutes. I was proud of that moment and the clarity I demonstrated for the audience.
Style: This was unusual. I ran a more NPDA West Coast style in the Deep South, with light humor and faster pacing, because I think it models strong debate. I did not tailor that style particularly well to my judging panel.
Takeaway: I cannot assume that all judges in policy rounds evaluate through a clean offense-defense framework. In my mind, if there is no clearly articulated harm from the negative and there is a risk of solvency, you take the action. This round reminded me that not everyone shares those baked-in assumptions. Some evaluate through instinct, federalism preference, or risk aversion in ways that must be directly engaged.
Negating “Loyalty to a friend requires telling them when their partner is cheating.”
Striking: I wasn’t taking this strike that seriously, mostly because I already knew I was advancing no matter what. I just thought it would be funny to try to defend a position that goes against everyone’s first instinct. Like, obviously the gut reaction is “yeah, if your friend’s partner is cheating, you tell them.”
Substance: I think there’s real ground in saying loyalty is more complicated than just instantly telling someone everything, especially when cheating accusations coming from a third party can blow up relationships, create jealousy, and in some cases even lead to IPV. I also liked going after the word “requires,” because that makes the aff defend a much stronger claim than just “telling your friend is usually good.”
That said, I think aff was probably right that the resolution kind of assumes the cheating is actually true, and that made some of my offense harder to land. Once the round becomes “your friend is definitely being cheated on,” aff gets to make a super simple and intuitive argument: they deserve to know, and a loyal friend tells them.
Style: This is probably where I lost. It was late, I was tired, and I could tell I didn’t really have the energy I usually do. Even though I got higher speaks, I still feel like my opponent sounded better in the ways that mattered most. He had more energy, especially in the last speech, and he did a really good job ending in a way that felt direct and human instead of just technical. The last 30 seconds were especially good — he basically just asked the judge what he would want in that situation, and for this kind of topic that’s really effective.
Structure: I don’t think structure was bad exactly, but I definitely misread the judge. I went in thinking he was going to be very flow-focused, so I leaned into a more structured, organized style. Then partway through the last speech I realized he probably wasn’t evaluating the round that way at all. He seemed much more persuaded by vibe, common sense, and big-picture framing than by technical structure.
Affirming “Prediction markets like Polymarket should be regulated as financial instruments.”
This was probably my most deserved loss of the season.
Striking: I was somewhat iffy on this topic. I chose it mostly because it is clearly a policy-style resolution, which is where I tend to feel most comfortable. It also does not specify an actor, which means the affirmative has flexibility. I could have framed regulation through the federal government, through state frameworks, or through some hybrid approach.
At the same time, I do not actually have a strong personal attachment to Polymarket or prediction markets as a concept. I was not particularly invested in the topic beyond thinking it would produce a clean cost-benefit debate. In retrospect, it was a fine strike but not one I felt deeply grounded in.
Substance: This is where I lost the round. There were two arguments that I did not have a sufficient answer for, and both of them should have been foreseeable. The first was the negative argument that we should simply ban prediction markets altogether. I did not have a clear response ready for that claim in the moment, which is surprising because there is a very intuitive answer: banning the market does not eliminate the demand. If people want to speculate on event outcomes, they will do it somewhere. The likely result of prohibition is not the disappearance of prediction markets but their migration into less accountable spaces—offshore platforms, decentralized crypto protocols, or informal betting networks. In that world, there are no transparency rules, no consumer protections, and no tax revenue. The obvious affirmative response should have been that regulated and taxed markets are preferable to unregulated black markets. That answer exists, and it is persuasive, but I did not articulate it during the round.
The second argument I struggled with was the claim that additional financial regulation would slow down or crash Polymarket entirely. My opponent argued that compliance costs and regulatory burdens would destroy liquidity and undermine the functioning of the market. I did not fully understand that argument in the moment, and I had not prepped a clear response to it.
In this round, I spaced out on those two arguments, and they were significant enough that a negative ballot is defensible.
Style: I was goofing around and having fun in this round, and my opponent was too. It was an enjoyable exchange, but I do think that affected my focus. There are rounds where I deliberately switch into a more serious, policy-oriented style—clear framing, deliberate pacing, and strong impact comparison. I did not really do that here. My head was not in the game in the way it should have been, and I think that showed in the way I handled the key arguments.
Structure: This was not a problem.
Some people sometimes ask me if I thought I deserved to win a round I didn’t.
My answer is always NO; that way of thinking lies madness. Our job is to convince the person in front of us to sign the ballot in our favor while not breaching academic, interpersonal, or ethical codes of conduct. If I didn’t get the win, then I didn’t do my job.
If you want to follow along as I keep adding to this list of losses, stick around on the blog and subscribe to my channel. I take on a small cohort of clients every month who want to start speaking like a national champion.
If you want something that pairs well with this message, read Love for Imperfect Things by Haemin Sunim. It is a gentle reminder that worth is not tied to performance, and that flaws are part of being human. I go back to it often.
You can also look to John Wooden. His writing on discipline, character, and process has shaped how I teach and compete. He cared more about daily improvement than scoreboard results. That mindset carries you a lot farther than any trophy.
Thanks for reading. I hope the wins help you. I hope the losses help you even more.
