The NFL

[B]By STEPHEN B. SMITH[/B]
[I]Special to the[/I] Saipan Tribune

Oh, you thought I meant football! No, not even. The real, the original NFL, the National Forensic League, was founded in 1924; the football organization that copied its acronym began in 1936.

Ten years ago an NFL chapter was founded here in the CNMI. It has grown, become established, and demonstrated success on a huge scale. The irony of that statement is, that even with the numbers I am about to throw out, there are still those in our CNMI community who don’t know what the NFL is or where to find it or understand the value that such an organization offers our community.

Again, 10 years ago (1999) one of our schools hosted our first NFL competition. It featured a dozen separate events, e.g., debate, impromptu speech, dramatic interpretation, socio-political extemporaneous speech and the like. There were 168 judged presentations (entries) that day. Four schools were involved as I recall. The following year, the number of schools increased to eight. The largest event hosted 465 entries, and there were four such events during the year. The larger number of entries was due in part to the expansion of divisions being accommodated. The NJFL was added bringing our junior high youngsters into the fold. And, due to the interest of one of our elementary school teachers, from Kagman elementary, two new divisions featuring grades K-2 and 3-5 were added. We weren’t yet bursting at the seams, but that was about to change.

Things were going smoothly. The judging corps for the various divisions and events were volunteer professionals from the community at large: district court judges, lawyers, doctors, professors from the college, businessmen and more. Ahh, and then year three was upon us. And boy was it upon us!

I happened to walk in on the first meet of the year, in year three (2001). It was being held at Mt. Carmel high school. As I walked through the gate from the church parking lot I noticed crowds of young people milling around. I sought out the meet generalissimo and asked what was going on. He looked desperate. “We have 1,225 entries and half the judges necessary to handle them.”

I couldn’t believe it! From 168 entries in 1999, to roughly 2,000 entries in 2000; we were suddenly looking at 5,000 entries for 2001. Put another way, the NFL umbrella group was forced to go from utilizing one Saturday each month at one school, to holding its meets at multiple schools spread over several weekends each month. And this isn’t all. The NFL umbrella has grown to include the International Thespian Society (ITS), The International Junior Thespians (JITS), Math Court (MC), and our newest division, the Carolinian and Chamorro Forensic Speech divisions (CCFS) (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12).

As an illustration of the expanding appeal of the NFL, last month (January ’09), and I checked, over 1,200 students entered some three thousand judged events in the combined divisions. This, I am told, is about average for a regular interscholastic one-month series. Carrying out the numbers, by its end, school year ’08-’09 will have seen some 15,000 judged entries from the combined divisions.

This is growth! So, getting to the point of this preamble, the growth has continued. This year the regional championships are so large that they have to be held on eight separate evenings and days in March. This is astounding because unlike other interscholastic meets during the school year, which are open to any regularly enrolled student, Regionals has qualifier limitations.

Regionals, too, is a qualifier in and of itself. Gold medalists in some of the divisions qualify to compete at various national championships and events. For those who are not aware, the CNMI has had numerous placements and breaks (advanced in competition) at the national level. In the NFL we have placed as high as eighth, in the NJFL third, in the ITS several scholarships have been awarded and high ratings achieved. Numerous other awards have also been gleaned, proving the worth of our student word-warriors. CNMI young people can compete with anybody; the record is clear.

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[I]Stephen B. Smith is the Accreditation, Language Arts, and National Forensic League coordinator for the Public School System Central Office.[/I]