SEO

[Rodger Biles]

As an alum of SEO and a former coach there I have watched with some
interest the posts regarding that program's direction.

I can confess to not always being happy with the direction of the
program but, you know, I would never presume to tell another program
director what his/her tournament schedule ought to be.  I certainly
wouldn't want a community consensus to decide ESU's travel schedule.
As an alum I have expressed my concern for the program and its
direction over the past few years to the chair of the department, who
happens to have been my college debate coach.  I have always been
assured of strong and continued support for the program although there
has been concern over how resources were utilized.

Shannon McCraw is a good friend and a former colleague of mine and I
have all the respect in the world for him.  I think its best, regardless of
the rhetoric an SEO debater may have used in a post, that we let the
Director at SEO run the SEO program.

I'd love to see the Savages at more tournaments, but I'd also love to see
The UTA Mavericks (another program with which I was associated)
debating again...but again that is a director's prerogative.

It would be nice for SEO to, once again, be known as something other
than the school Dennis Rodman attended.

BTW>>>Jackie...SEO was not the first CEDA JV National Champions.
Marlow and Wilson won it in 1989 but they were not the first...Amy had
run the NJDDT for several years at Johnson County at that point and at
the time George Mason also conducted a JV National Tournament  (I
believe Abilene Christian won that version of the tournament in 1989).

Back to working on SEA and not SEO,

rodger