I’ve noticed something after the UKTOC.
Somehow, like always, the most predictable part of the entire tournament wasn’t who broke or who didn’t… it was what everyone said after.
“Lay screws.”
“Bad judging.”
“This judge shouldn’t be allowed to judge”
At this point, you could probably pre-write half the post-round complaints before the tournament even starts.
But here’s the thing: in extemp, “lay screws” don’t really exist.
What people call a “lay screw” is usually just a judge… judging.
Most judges are not sitting there thinking, “Wow, that was a beautiful third-level substructure with excellent internal links.” They’re thinking, “Did I understand that?” “Was that interesting?” “Who sounded like they knew what they were talking about?”
And honestly, that’s exactly how the event is supposed to work.
Somewhere along the way, though — wayyyyyyyy before I came along, and wayyyyyyyy before I even dreamed of being decent at extemp — extemp got weirdly insular. If you’ve been through places like UTNIF or George Mason Debate Institute, you’ve probably learned the “correct” way to do extemp. You know the elite substructure, the strategic on-tops, the exact same style, the subtle things that make a speech feel “circuitous.”
And again, that’s not a bad thing. That’s how most people get good.
But people start treating that like it’s the rulebook instead of just one really effective strategy. And once that happens, anything outside of it starts to feel wrong—even if it’s actually working better for the judge in the room.
So when someone wins without sounding like the standard model of an extemper, the reaction isn’t curiosity, it’s frustration. It’s “there’s no way that should’ve won,” instead of “why did that work?”
And that’s where “lay screw” becomes a coping mechanism.
Because it’s a lot easier to believe you got robbed than to admit something uncomfortable: maybe your speech wasn’t nearly as clear as you thought. Maybe it was far too dense. Maybe you were so focused on sounding polished that you stopped sounding human. Maybe someone else was just… more engaging.
But the truth is, extemp rewards communication, not conformity. And those two things overlap, but they are not the same.
You can have perfect structure and still lose because nobody (besides graduated extempers that care) cares. You can have great evidence and still lose because nobody follows you at 10:00 PM. You can hit every technical expectation and still lose to someone who just connects better with the audience.
And that’s the part people don’t like, because it’s harder to control.
It’s way easier to fix your intro than it is to fix whether people actually enjoy listening to you.
And to be fair, judging isn’t perfectly consistent. You might get that one judge who gives you a 6 while everyone else has you winning. It happens. Every extemper has that round where the ballot makes you stare at the wall for a bit.
But even then, unless something genuinely unfair happened, that ballot still means something. It means that for at least one person in that room, your speech didn’t land. In an event where your entire goal is to communicate to any audience, that’s not irrelevant—it’s the whole point.
The deeper issue is the culture this creates. When people constantly blame “lay judges,” it does two things. First, it discredits people who do well in those rounds, like their success is somehow less legitimate. Second, it builds this mindset where you never actually have to adapt, because the problem is always external.
But extemp is literally an event about adaptation (as implied in its name). If your skill only works on judges who already agree with your style, that’s not mastery—that’s dependency.
I didn’t break at UKTOC. Some (huge asterisk) people thought I would. I didn’t get the ranks people expected me to get.
And yeah, in the past, I’ve been the person complaining about “screwy” judges too.
But if I’m being honest, I wasn’t satisfied with my speeches. They got by, but they weren’t the same as the ones I’ve given at my better tournaments. They weren’t as sharp, not as clear, not as controlled. Deep down, I knew that. It’s just easier not to say it out loud.
This isn’t really a critique of extemp. It’s more of a message going forward.
You’re going to get bad ranks sometimes. That’s part of it. And when that happens, you have two options. You can cope, blame the judge, call it a “lay screw,” and move on.
Or you can be honest with yourself and get better.
Because at the end of the day, the people who actually improve—the ones who adapt, who fix what didn’t work, who stop hiding behind excuses—are the ones who keep winning.
Not once. Not by accident.
But over and over again.
At the end of the day, most judges are doing something very simple: they’re picking the speech they thought was best.
If that wasn’t you, it’s probably not because they failed.
It’s because, in that room, on that day, someone else was clearer, more interesting, or just easier to listen to.
Not a “lay screw.”
Just a loss.