Coach Dunzel

March 17, 2012 – Coach Dunzel

I’ve always told my children that you can choose your actions but you can’t choose the consequences. Every choice we make in life necessarily limits other paths. While the choice to join Celebrity seems so clearly right to me, it definitely came with a cost. The cost of being away from family is somewhat tolerable as I know we will always have future experiences together. But the cost of leaving my Forensics team is much harder to bear for each tournament is a moment in time lost as they move down the path toward graduation.

This was the weekend of the Colorado State Speech and Debate Tournament. For the first time in seven years I would not be at that tournament. Even more dramatically, I was supposed to be the assistant chair of the tournament, leading to my being the chair in 2013. Instead I would be on a ship hundreds of miles off the East Coast. It was very hard, as it had been two weeks earlier to be that far away from my team. It was harder emotionally to know how they would be able to continue to move forward with achieving their goals with me completely out

Star Trek fans from the 1960s will recognize the reference in the title. In an early episode, Captain James T. Kirk is replaced by an ‘automated captain,’ a computer that has been designed to do everything a human captain can do, only better. Kirk is asked to stay on Enterprise to simply monitor the computer’s performance, and soon realizes in all the tests that the computer is outperformed him. At the end of the test, the fleet Admiral sends him a message, “Congratulations, Captain Dunzel.” Dunzel, you see, was an old Star Fleet Academy term for something that was out-of-date and unnecessary. As the results rolled in from State tournament, I began to feel like Captain Kirk.

For the first time in the school’s history St. Mary’s High School Forensics won not one, but TWO state championships in events in the same speech and debate competition. In addition, another entry finished 3^rd in their event, and a final entry finished 6^th. This was by far and away the best State Championship showing by any St. Mary’s Forensics teams and easily one of the best in the state. And it all happened with me thousands of miles away. It was a great reminder that we are all dispensable. When it comes to forensics, it really comes down to the talent and honed skill of the students who walk into the room to compete. When I finally received the email of the results I was both elated for these remarkable kids and a little melancholy that I wasn’t there. I was proud of Rosie and Dani for the great job they had done in continuing to coach and lead this team in my absence. I was immensely proud of all their efforts.

And with simple recognition, and without self-pity, I accepted my new title, Coach Dunzel.

And the adventure continues . . .