Pramas and Fuller
You know, it's funny how topics come to you when you want to write about things. I haven't written for The Relay in a long time. But today, I called my parents and my father told me I hadn't written in a while (I had no idea he actually paid attention to my posts!). Then, I read more about Hyperbole's most incredible documentary of his trek to climb Kilimanjaro. Then, Mizzou beat my Kansas State team in basketball, like they always seem to do at the "right" moments (not like KU, who used to, until Wednesday, just always beat us). And suddenly, a topic came to me.
I'm a little reluctant to write about this, because my dear friend Jim, who just climbed Kilimanjaro, is married to one of the characters. But still, I consider both my friends, so I must.
We all have our rivals--that is the theme I was thinking of earlier. Back when I was at Kansas State debating, my senior year, when I actually started to be a player, there was no doubt who my rival was: it was Pramas and Fuller from Macalester.
It wasn't because of any animosity or anything. Hell, I had a crush on Melissa Fuller for two years while I was debating, before she started dating, and eventually marrying, Jim. Tim Pramas? Really nice guy. Smart. As they both were. We could have lots of drinks together, and I did later with Melissa on a couple of occasions. Tim, I don't know what happened to that guy.
But here is the thing: debaters, especially senior debaters, tend to have a weird connection in that they tend to debate the same teams over and over again. My senior year, for example, K-State's best team of Fillipi and McCollum would always seem to debate the eventual national champion team of Mallard and Hoe from Central Oklahoma (and usually beat them, by the way). I only debated against that team once that year. And that deserves a tangent.
My partner my senior year was Marty Horn, a junior. He was a transfer from Fort Hays State, and at the beginning of the year, we were not teamed up. But my original partner got kicked off the team for being a pothead, and Marty and I were placed together. I think, in retrospect, it was an inspired choice. I think I was probably smarter than Marty, and had a better instinct of what was happening during a debate. Marty, though, was a much more gifted speaker, and could preach from a podium like very few people I've ever come across--he knew how to win an audience. It took a while for us to feel each other out and learn how to use each other, but that eventually happened, and I think that by the end of the year Marty and I were considered by our peers as one of the better teams in the country.
The only problem was that we kept running into Pramas and Fuller.
I have only won one college debate tournament in my life. I have helped "close out" many tournaments that didn't demand my participation, but I have only actually won one tournament in the final round. That was in 1990 at the University of Missouri at Kansas City's tournament, and if I was going to ever win one, I'm pretty happy it was that one, as it was one of the biggest tournaments that year, with enough participants to send the tournament to double-octa-finals.
But, returning to the original thread: Marty and I knew we were going to win that tournament when we heard that Pramas and Fuller had lost.
And that was because we seemed to have always debated Pramas and Fuller in every debate tournament that year in the out-rounds, and always seemed to lose on a 2-1 decision.
I mean, it was nuts, crazy, and out of statistical probability. We hit Pramas and Fuller all the time in out rounds, usually in quarterfinals. And they always beat us 2-1. We couldn't get over the hump of that last judge. And we earned the well-deserved ridicule of our coaching staff and teammates because of it. It was like, what in the world do we have to do in order to beat these freaks?
Well, the answer came from Marty, not me. For me, debate was always a secondary thing to my degree, but for Marty, it was his entire life. Marty finally had enough of losing to Pramas and Fuller, and spent two entire weeks researching and preparing to attack their case, which had never changed over the semester (to their credit: they didn't need to, and had such success arguing it). He was NOT going to lose to that case again. I seem to remember asking him if it was worth spending all that time against it, but we both knew that we WERE going to hit Pramas and Fuller again.
And we did. The next tournament, actually, Semi-finals at the Nebraska-hosted national weenie tournament, we hit the big P&F. Marty and I were on the negative. And Mac started out with the exact same affirmative case they had run the entire year. Marty handed me the file he had constructed and I had gone across a couple of times. When I got up for the 1NC, I was ready, I tell you. I started spewing shit out that Marty had put together and we had never before sent the way of Pramas and Fuller. I remember at one time looking over at Melissa and she shot me glance back with a smile and a big thumbs up, saying in effect, "Yeah, motherfucker, you're bringing it on this time! " I thought the round was clear. It was a no-brainer. We crushed them. And the three judges didn't take long to figure it out: 3-0 for the negative, Kansas State. Me and Marty got a close-out of the final round, so we didn't have to worry about debating again. But more importantly, we finally beat Pramas and Fuller, the target of all our ridicule from our teammates, and the thorn in our side. Years later, I wonder if I didn't get past triple-octafinals in a great upset at Nationals, because Pramas and Fuller were not in our bracket, and thus, not destined to meet us.
Here's the crazy thing: Fuller is a great friend of mine and married another great friend. We had the chance of seeing each other a couple of years later in San Francisco, and I asked Melissa if she could actually admit we had finally beat her that round, seeing as it was probably the only non-2-1 round we had ever been a part of. She didn't. She thought she and Pramas had kicked our asses.
I guess that explains the passion of debaters.
I'm a little reluctant to write about this, because my dear friend Jim, who just climbed Kilimanjaro, is married to one of the characters. But still, I consider both my friends, so I must.
We all have our rivals--that is the theme I was thinking of earlier. Back when I was at Kansas State debating, my senior year, when I actually started to be a player, there was no doubt who my rival was: it was Pramas and Fuller from Macalester.
It wasn't because of any animosity or anything. Hell, I had a crush on Melissa Fuller for two years while I was debating, before she started dating, and eventually marrying, Jim. Tim Pramas? Really nice guy. Smart. As they both were. We could have lots of drinks together, and I did later with Melissa on a couple of occasions. Tim, I don't know what happened to that guy.
But here is the thing: debaters, especially senior debaters, tend to have a weird connection in that they tend to debate the same teams over and over again. My senior year, for example, K-State's best team of Fillipi and McCollum would always seem to debate the eventual national champion team of Mallard and Hoe from Central Oklahoma (and usually beat them, by the way). I only debated against that team once that year. And that deserves a tangent.
My partner my senior year was Marty Horn, a junior. He was a transfer from Fort Hays State, and at the beginning of the year, we were not teamed up. But my original partner got kicked off the team for being a pothead, and Marty and I were placed together. I think, in retrospect, it was an inspired choice. I think I was probably smarter than Marty, and had a better instinct of what was happening during a debate. Marty, though, was a much more gifted speaker, and could preach from a podium like very few people I've ever come across--he knew how to win an audience. It took a while for us to feel each other out and learn how to use each other, but that eventually happened, and I think that by the end of the year Marty and I were considered by our peers as one of the better teams in the country.
The only problem was that we kept running into Pramas and Fuller.
I have only won one college debate tournament in my life. I have helped "close out" many tournaments that didn't demand my participation, but I have only actually won one tournament in the final round. That was in 1990 at the University of Missouri at Kansas City's tournament, and if I was going to ever win one, I'm pretty happy it was that one, as it was one of the biggest tournaments that year, with enough participants to send the tournament to double-octa-finals.
But, returning to the original thread: Marty and I knew we were going to win that tournament when we heard that Pramas and Fuller had lost.
And that was because we seemed to have always debated Pramas and Fuller in every debate tournament that year in the out-rounds, and always seemed to lose on a 2-1 decision.
I mean, it was nuts, crazy, and out of statistical probability. We hit Pramas and Fuller all the time in out rounds, usually in quarterfinals. And they always beat us 2-1. We couldn't get over the hump of that last judge. And we earned the well-deserved ridicule of our coaching staff and teammates because of it. It was like, what in the world do we have to do in order to beat these freaks?
Well, the answer came from Marty, not me. For me, debate was always a secondary thing to my degree, but for Marty, it was his entire life. Marty finally had enough of losing to Pramas and Fuller, and spent two entire weeks researching and preparing to attack their case, which had never changed over the semester (to their credit: they didn't need to, and had such success arguing it). He was NOT going to lose to that case again. I seem to remember asking him if it was worth spending all that time against it, but we both knew that we WERE going to hit Pramas and Fuller again.
And we did. The next tournament, actually, Semi-finals at the Nebraska-hosted national weenie tournament, we hit the big P&F. Marty and I were on the negative. And Mac started out with the exact same affirmative case they had run the entire year. Marty handed me the file he had constructed and I had gone across a couple of times. When I got up for the 1NC, I was ready, I tell you. I started spewing shit out that Marty had put together and we had never before sent the way of Pramas and Fuller. I remember at one time looking over at Melissa and she shot me glance back with a smile and a big thumbs up, saying in effect, "Yeah, motherfucker, you're bringing it on this time! " I thought the round was clear. It was a no-brainer. We crushed them. And the three judges didn't take long to figure it out: 3-0 for the negative, Kansas State. Me and Marty got a close-out of the final round, so we didn't have to worry about debating again. But more importantly, we finally beat Pramas and Fuller, the target of all our ridicule from our teammates, and the thorn in our side. Years later, I wonder if I didn't get past triple-octafinals in a great upset at Nationals, because Pramas and Fuller were not in our bracket, and thus, not destined to meet us.
Here's the crazy thing: Fuller is a great friend of mine and married another great friend. We had the chance of seeing each other a couple of years later in San Francisco, and I asked Melissa if she could actually admit we had finally beat her that round, seeing as it was probably the only non-2-1 round we had ever been a part of. She didn't. She thought she and Pramas had kicked our asses.
I guess that explains the passion of debaters.
posted by cc at
5:10 PM
6 Comments:
Worth noting, of course, that the only reason you didn't have to debate Melissa and Tim in the semis at UMKC is because of me beating them in the quarters.....and because we really got the shaft against you in the semis, bastard.
Oh, yeah, that's right. Thanks for that, Jim. That semis round was the hardest of all of them, and we had a pretty decent draw--Mallard and Hoe in octs, Jarman in quarters, you, then CSU again in finals. Like I said, I'm pretty satisfied that that was my only win.
Last I knew, Tim was an attorney here in the Twin Cities. But that's been about 15 years ago that I saw him. If you're talking about the South Carolina nationals, turns out it was me who took the hit and got elminated by Pramas/Fuller, in Double-octs I think. I always wondered who I was taking that bullet for...
Oh, no, not the real national tournament. This was the minor N/A whatever initial letters one that was at Nebraska that year. Hell, I didn't even break at Carolina.
You are talking about the DSR-TKA. It still exists, but the policy part of it does not.
No offense to Dave and Rich, but I don't they were the best KSU team your senior year.
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