December 21^th, 2018

Dear Speech Coach:

Valley City High School cordially invites you and your students to attend the Valley City High School Invitational Speech Tournament to be held Saturday, January 12, 2019.  Registration will take place in the Junior High locker area near the cafeteria from 7:30 - 8:00 a.m.  A judge’s meeting will begin at 8:30 in the Theater.  The best place to enter is on west side of the school about mid-block. Draws will begin at 8:30 for Radio and Storytelling.

The competition will include all 14 NDHSAA speech events in one varsity division.  There will be no limit to the number of entries per school. Students may enter up to 4 events; however, please note that we will NOT protect speaking times if more than double entered.  Multiple entries may result in loss of preparation time.  Students may compete in both serious and humorous duo, but must have a different partner.  Awards will be given to all finalists. A top Novice award will be presented in each category to the top Novice not advancing to a final round.  Novice is considered to be a 7^th, 8^th, or 1^st year 9^th grader (please designate with an * before the name for registration).  A Novice Duo is one where both partners meet Novice eligibility.   Sweepstakes awards will be given to the top four teams.

All entries are due NO LATER than Tuesday, January 8, 2019 by 5 p.m. Fees will be assessed at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, January 13^th.  We will be using a Google Sheets Form for registration. You will have access to make any changes until Tuesday, January 8^th, 2019 at 5 PM. After that point, the registration form will not be able to be edited by you. Any drops or substitutions that need to be made after that time should be emailed to nicholas.lee.2@vcsu.edu.  Adds will only be taken IF slots are available.    

According to the Handbook for 2018-2019 General Rules and Regulations for Speech by NDHSAA, the LANGUAGE/CONTENT FORM may be found on the web at www.ndhsaa.com under “Fine Arts” and “Speech”.  You are to download the form, fill it out, have your high school administrator sign it, sign it yourself, and carry it with you to each individual tournament.

Also, students and coaches must be able to provide copyright & correct category, see rule Burden of Proof under Specific Oral Interpretation Rules in the NDHSAA Handbook for Speech Contests. Students no longer need to bring burden of proof to each round, but must provide it if some portion of their content is in question.

Fees for the individual events are $7 per entry; duos are $12 per entry.  Please make checks payable to Valley City High School.  You must supply 1 judge for each 6 entries, or pay $75 for each hired judge.  As always, judges are in short supply, so please do your best to supply your own.  If you are able to supply extra judges, please notify me as soon as possible.  If you are planning to judge, please bring stopwatches and be prepared to time the events you are judging. Also, please remind your judges to be certified so that my tournament events can be state qualifying.  They need to test and be certified as per NDHSAA rules.

I will check NDHSAA judge’s list.  I will NOT use judges that are not on the list, and unfortunately, I will bill you for any judge that has to be replaced.  This may delay the tournament.  Please check the list when submitting your registration listing your judges.

If in the event that there is inclement weather that may cause a problem to the holding of the tournament, a cancellation will be decided by 3 A.M. the day of the tournament. If not cancelled by that point, the tournament will proceed as scheduled. If a school decides to not attend the tournament the day of the tournament fees will still be assessed if the tournament proceeds.  This is due to the fact that many of the costs of running a tournament are incurred whether or not a school decides to attend the tournament (judges still must be paid, concessions are already purchased, etc.) If your school makes the decision not to travel to the tournament due to weather or other circumstances the earlier you can let me know the better as it will make changes to the schedule.

Please direct questions to me by email or phone after 4 p.m.  Thanks.

nicholas.lee.2@vcsu.edu  or  701-840-3870. Please leave a voicemail and I will call you back ASAP or shoot me a text.  In addition, if you are no longer the contact person for your school please forward to the respective coach.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Lee, VCHS Head Speech Coach

Hannah Isakson, Assistant Speech Coach

Samantha Sayler, Assistant Speech Coach

Hannah Petersen, Jr. High Speech Coach

Abigail Ingstad, Jr. High Speech Coach