Welcome to the first annual Stratford Schools Novice Winter Tournament! We are excited to be hosting an event in January this year and look forward to hosting a second event in Spring 2021! As with most tournaments in our present environment, this will be an online event.

This will be a speech & debate tournament. We will have a full day of debate on Saturday, followed by a day of Speech on Sunday. The speech rounds will be synchronous, in order to give competitors the experience of performing live.

Fees will be $40/student ($80 for one PF team), with a one-time $50 team entry fee. Please make checks out to "Stratford Schools" and send them to the address on your invoice. We are working on getting some sort of digital payment system, but it may not be ready in time for the event.

EVENTS

Novice in this instance refers to Middle School competitors only.

We will be running PF, LD, and Congressional this year for debate, and our IEs will be Dramatic Interp, Duo Interp, Expos, Humorous Interp, Impromptu, Oratorical Interp, and Original Oratory.

Double-Entry is allowed. PF and LD competitors may sign up for 2 speech events, or for Congressional (but not both Speech and Congress). Speech competitors may sign up for 2 different events if they so choose. There will be no double entry between IEs and Congressional, unfortunately, because they will be happening concurrently.

Coaches may double-enter judges to cover their obligations with one caveat: a judge can only cover one debate event in addition to speech, otherwise, they will be running non-stop to judge the whole weekend. We recommend registering your speech judges first, then double-entering them for one debate category.

For Novice Speech, the regular 10-minute maximum times will be in place for those who prepare to use the full time. Oratorical Interp has no minimum time, but a hard-maximum of 10 minutes with no grace period. Impromptu and Expository will have their regular 7-minute time limits.

LOGISTICS

This tournament will be all digital. Rounds will be announced via e-mail and SMS, ballots will be tabulated digitally. Students and judges should also register their e-mail and phone number (if applicable) with their tabroom account so that information gets pushed out in a timely fashion.