The Mississippi State Speech & Debate Council

    presents

The Fifth Annual, First-Ever Virtual

MSU Cowbell Classic

-SPONSORED BY-

The John C. Stennis Center for Public Service

Dear Friends:

Greetings from the MSU Speech & Debate Council. It is our pleasure to announce that, despite the trials of a global pandemic, the Cowbell Classic will go on as scheduled – virtually, for the first and hopefully only time. 

As always, we are proud to partner with the John C. Stennis Center for Public Service, which is once again sponsoring this year’s tournament. The Stennis Center is known nationwide for its support of speech and debate as a means of fostering leadership among students. We are extremely grateful for their support.

We will follow a similar format to other online tournaments this year. All MHSAA individual events except Impromptu will be offered, along with LD, PF, CX, and Congress. We are pleased to offer NIETOC bids in individual events based on entry numbers. All individual events except Extemp will be asynchronous; all debate events and Extemp will be live. Students may enter up to three asynchronous events and one live event. We will feature six prelims of LD and PF, and 4 or 5 prelims of CX depending on entries. Congress will hold two sessions and break to finals.

Due to shipping costs, we will be switching to medals for individual competitors this year, along with sweepstakes trophies for top performing schools in debate and overall events. As always, we would be happy to waive entry fees for schools that are in their first or second year of competition, or their first or second year back after an absence of at least five years.

We’re looking forward to (virtually) seeing everyone on January 22-23, 2021 for a weekend of fun and great competition.