Summary

Welcome to the new, fully virtual, and free Big 8 conference forensics tournament.

Standard WFCA scoring will be used to determine the conference's forensics team champion, as well as recognition for top school score from their 10 highest-scoring novice entries (based on Tabroom novice status) to determine the conference novice champion. Individuals will also be competing for the title of conference champion!

As noted, the tournament is free. All you need to compete are entry videos and judges. Trophies will instead take the form of bragging rights, virtual handshakes, and eternal glory. This is also a great opportunity to get some last-minute feedback before the WFCA state tournament.

Judging

"We'd rather have your judges than your money."

If your team doesn't have sufficient judging by the close of registration, I'll play random-number-roulette in Excel to determine which entries to drop. We don't want that.

The virtual format and regional focus is geared toward bringing back alumni to judge, though anyone is welcome to judge.

Schedule (overview)

Video submission deadline will be Monday 3/22 at 4PM.

Prelims will be judged Tuesday through Thursday, with a flexible schedule to accommodate busy judges!

Power rounds will be released late Thursday with a due date of noon Saturday.

Awards will take place Saturday afternoon, ideally over a format that allows for some form of live-reacting/chat.

Limited Prep

Limited Prep materials for Radio and Impromptu will be disseminated via Google Docs on 3/15, a week before the tournament. Radio and Impromptu will use the 'video upload timestamp within 30 minutes of Google Doc timestamp' standard.

Extemp questions will be announced 3/21 at 4PM, 24 hours prior to submission deadline. Students will be able to use as much or as little as they want of the 24 hour prep time to research and rehearse their extemp speech. However, they should not consult with coaches or other individuals for help with their speech.

Multi-Video Events

OIL and Storytelling should instead submit a link to a Google Doc that contains links to each recording. Storytelling should also indicate in the doc their preference for which story to choose in Finals.

Double/Triple/Quadruple/Quintuple/etc Entries

Go for it. Bring enough judges and you can enter up to all 18 events. This does not allow multiple entries from an individual within a single category.

Congress

There will not be a Congress division offered at this tournament, because this tournament has, I'll repeat again, zero budget.

Eligibility

This tournament is open to member schools from the Big 8 Conference in Wisconsin. In typical Midwest fashion, the name of the conference has no correlation to the number of member schools. These are the eligible schools:

- Beloit Memorial High School

- Janesville Craig High School

- Janesville Parker High School

- Madison East High School

- Madison La Follette High School

- Madison Memorial High School

- Madison West High School

- Middleton High School

- Sun Prairie (East and West)

- Verona Area High School