A Case for Hybrid Teams: Let the People Choose

By: Kai Zhang

5/26/2024

Debate exemplifies a paradox: it is simultaneously hyper individualistic and reliant on collective team collaboration. You are awarded individual speaker scores that rank you against your teammates, creating a sense of internal competition as you try to out place everyone and anyone. But in order to deliver those round-winning speeches, you almost certainly would have to rely on your teammates’ support, work with each other, and be a team player yourself. Any decent debater could tell you just how crucial having a good team is to winning and actually enjoying the fun of debate. In a good team that works smoothly, nothing you handle has to be done alone. Teammates support each other, clarify questions and offer second opinions on ideas. During rounds they pass material to you, and you also closely follow their speeches, ready to jump in with ideas should they ever have trouble.

Really, the teamwork aspect of debate often makes you feel like you are being pushed and pushing others to reach maximum potential, a rewarding experience of growth and learning that goes beyond simply winning rounds. Through teamwork under high stress, you learn how to perform well in the confidence of having reassuring teammates. But for some debaters, this experience has been elusive to reach. Not every school or debate program operates in the same capacity, with the same resources or in the same way. Debaters from smaller debate schools are more likely to face the problem of finding a team that matches their level, or team at all, than the bigger debate schools with plenty of people interested and available. It is the unfortunate reality that not everyone would love debate or stick with it till the end. But for those who do, tournaments must allow them their fair chance to succeed as well.

The very idea of hybrid teams was started with the intention of allowing more freedom with debate teams, mix and matching between schools to better accommodate debaters. When given this opportunity to look for teammates beyond the constraints of your own school, there is a much higher chance of actually being able to form a good team that allows you to compete to your full potential. Likewise, less-experienced debaters in competitive debate schools who would normally not make it on their school teams now also have a way of competing more frequently. This breaks a negative cycle of being not good enough to send to competitions precisely because you don’t go to competitions, a common problem faced by many in competitive schools.

So this is a win-win situation. More flexibility with teams sounds great. But how would that work out for tournaments? How would they handle the additional teams? Well, as of now, many tournaments allowing hybrid teams already have certain rules set in place to best protect themselves and to help hybrid teams succeed. They are still expected to have a judge with them (could be one from any of the debater’s schools), or else to pay a no-judge fee that should cover the cost of hiring additional ones. There should be a team cap set specifically for hybrid teams, given the good chance that they are not able to bring a judge along and how much can the tournament handle. All of these challenges can be fixed or mitigated, the solution lies in more tournaments accepting hybrid teams to compete, allowing some debaters their opportunity to do well in a tournament with a better team than before.

Equality in debate should permeate to so many more areas than just the manner we speak, the content we build, but also Debate as an event is already incredibly exclusive and favors stronger schools.. Equality in the event that talks all about it needs to be protected, to uphold the idea of free and open dialogues where everyone can have a voice. It is hypocritical for us to claim such if we are still barring debaters from small schools with no team or debaters from a competitive school with little opportunity from entering competitions. That is discouraging, and only dwindles the numbers of small school debaters still pursuing the event. Love for debate can only last so long. As for coaches, hybrid teams could both present a challenge and an alternative solution to retain members. Hybrid teams would leave initiatives to proactively practice debate to the member’s own time.

But given this motivation to debate with a friend out of school, debaters are more likely to be a returner. With more people interested in the activity, everyone has an easier time encouraging the growth and school investments: money into something never hurts. So when you give people the power to choose, you allow for more creative dynamics, the fusion of cultures, equality in allowing competition, you help them to become better debaters. Hybrid teams aren't an unfair advantage or an odd case. So many people would love to do so, even if it’s just to switch the friend.