PSDA Online Fall Classic
2022 — NSDA Campus, CA/US
The Professional Speech and Debate Association (PSDA) cordially invites you to the inaugural Online Fall Classic Tournament on October 22nd and 23rd. Saturday October 22nd will feature 4 preliminary rounds of speech events, followed by a final round for all speech events. Sunday October 23rd will feature 2 preliminary rounds of congressional debate, followed by a final round, and 5 preliminary rounds of other debate events followed by a final round.
Judges are assigned to the divisions their team is not entered in. This ensures that all rounds are judged by neutral, unaffiliated judges from other divisions. It also allows for optimal judge usage, guaranteeing an equal share of ballots for every judge (rather than judges from larger entries getting fewer ballots and small school judges picking up the slack). Finally, this practice has the added benefit of allowing judges to observe other age groups outside their normal tournament experience, which broadens judge experience and provides opportunity for high school and college recruitment.
The tournament design features the ability to make this a 1-day or a 2-day tournament depending on your interests. All of our entry fees are kept as low as possible to increase accessibility, and we never charge nuisance fees. We believe the job of being a coach is hard enough as it is, and having extra fees tacked on because a competitor got sick, wasn’t prepared in time, or decided to join the tournament late is unjust. Further, fees for missed ballots or judge no-shows do not actually help solve any issues. In our view, “punishable by fine” means “legal for a price.” Rather, if a team collectively misses over 20% of their ballots then their students that would’ve advanced will not be included in outrounds. We feel this is a stronger deterrent than fines, and allows teams grace when inevitable things come up. We hope to never have to enact this policy of non-advancing students, and that every team meets their judge obligations. We hire extra judges from HiredJudge.com to ensure everyone gets extra off-rounds, and that we’ll have coverage for anyone that wants to leave their entries uncovered. If you have any concerns about the reliability of your judges you are encouraged to leave your entries uncovered and we’ll supply a judge for you.
We offer 5 divisions based on grade: Elementary, Junior, High School, College, and Professional. Each school grade division has an open and novice division to accommodate all skill levels, and the professional division is open to anyone over the age of 18.
Competitors on Saturday may enter in up to 3 events in the speech pattern. and Sunday competitors must choose one event in the debate pattern.
The PSDA awards cash prizes to finalists in the professional division. Cash prize sums are calculated as a percentage of entries within each event (detailed below); larger entries means larger cash prizes! A select group of professional competitors are allowed to enter for free following their performance in other PSDA tournaments. Challengers are encouraged to enter the professional division and test their skills against these pros!
All registrations, ballots, and postings are available here
Easy Registration: If you are unfamiliar with our tournament hosting platform, Tabroom.com, and would like a simpler registration process we’ve made it easy! Register now on our website.
About the PSDA
The PSDA was founded with a singular mission: “Make speech and debate the most popular extra-curricular activity in the world.”
We are taking multiple avenues to achieve this goal:
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The formation and promotion of a professional division of speech and debate competition. We believe that televised and recorded rounds of professional competition will drive increased interest in all levels of speech and debate.
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We strive to make the job of a coach easier, which enables all coaches to be more effective in other efforts like recruiting and retaining students.
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We are focused on “the first round, not the final round.” This means we hope to make a competitor’s first tournament experience as positive as possible through judge training and accountability, schedule considerations, and norm formation. This increases the conversion of first-time competitors into lifelong competitors.
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After each season any profits are committed to lobbying for speech and debate programs. This top-down approach again makes the job of coaches easier as it centralizes the need to advocate for the existence of forensics programs into our organization. We believe lobbying for more funding, academic credit, and awareness for speech and debate teams is the most effective way to grow this activity.
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CONTACT: Blake Longfellow admin@prosda.com (925) 285-1435 Questions, comments, concerns, complaints? Feel free to reach out! PSDA Mailing Address: 15983 Gary Way Grass Valley, CA 95949 Fee Calculation: IE/Congress Entry Fee - $12 per entry Uncovered IE/Congress Entry Fee - $25 per entry 1-person Debate Entry Fee - $25 per entry 2-person Debate Entry Fee - $50 per entry Uncovered Debate Entry Fee - $70 per entry Missed Ballots: No Charge Late additions: No Charge Drops: No Charge No School Fee Judging Burden: 1 judge for every 2 debate entries. 1 judge for every 5 Speech or Congress entries. Any team that fails to accept 20% or more of their collective ballots will forfeit any students that would’ve advanced to elimination rounds. We do not charge missed ballot fees, as that does not actually help us solve the problem of unreliable judges. Rather, if you have any concern that your judges will not be reliable you are strongly encouraged to leave your entries uncovered and we will provide a judge for you. |
Tournament Schedule Pacific Time Zone Saturday 10/22 7:15 – Judge Training 8:00 – Speech Round 1 (Ext. 7:45) 9:30 – Speech Round 2 (Ext. 9:15) 11:00 – Speech Round 3 (Ext. 10:45) 12:30 – Speech Round 4 (Ext. 12:15) Lunch Break 3:00 – All Final Rounds (Ext. 2:45) Awards ASAP Sunday 10/23 7:15 - Judge Training 8:00 - Congress/Debate Round 1 10:00 - Debate Round 2 11:30 - Congress Round 2 12:00 - Debate Round 3 Lunch Break 2:30 - Debate Elim 1 Awards ASAP |
AWARDS
All PSDA Tournament results are commemorated with a custom certificate including the competitors name and accomplishment, via email shortly after the tournament.
Online Fall Classic finalists will receive a trophy commemorating their accomplishment via mail in the weeks following the tournament.
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Speech results are scored as follows:
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Debate results are scored as follows:
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Congress results are scored as follows:
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Team Sweepstakes
1. Overall Team Sweepstakes will be awarded to the top 3 teams in each Open division.
2. Only the top 5 competitors from each team will count towards team sweepstakes.
Individual Sweepstakes
1. Overall Individual Sweepstakes will be awarded to the top 3 competitors in each Open division.
2. Points can be earned in
Professional Event Prizes
1. The top 6 competitors in each event of the Professional division will receive cash prizes at every PSDA tournament.
2. Cash prize pools will equal 5% of the total entry fees collected within each respective event.
3. For speech events 1st place will be awarded 30% of the prize pool, 2nd place will be awarded 25%, 3rd place will be awarded 20%, 4th place will be awarded 15%, and 5th and 6th place will each receive 5% of the total prize pool.
4. For debate events Gold awards will share 65% of the prize pool for their events, and Silver awards will share the remaining 35% of the prize pool.
EVENTS
Elementary
The Elementary division will follow rules from the National Online Forensics Association which can be found here beginning on page 23.
The events offered in the Elementary division include:
Saturday Speech (may enter up to 3) - Original Oratory/Persuasive, Informative, Declamation, Impromptu, Duo Interpretation, Poetry, and Storytelling.
Sunday - (must choose 1) - Public Forum, SPAR (Spontaneous Argumentation), Congress.
Junior
The Junior division will follow rules from the National Online Forensics Association which can be found here beginning on page 23.
The events offered in the Junior division include:
Saturday (may enter up to 3) - Declamation, Dramatic Interpretation, Duo Interpretation, Extemporaneous, Humorous Interpretation, Impromptu, Informative, Original Oratory/Persuasive, Poetry, POI, Prose, Speech to Entertain, Storytelling.
Sunday - (must choose 1) - Public Forum, SPAR (Spontaneous Argumentation), Congress and Lincoln Douglas.
High School
The High School division will follow rules from the National Speech and Debate Association which can be found here.
The events offered in the High School division include:
Saturday (may enter up to 3) - Dramatic Interpretation, Duo Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Poetry, Program Oral Interpretation, Prose, Storytelling, Declamation, Expository, Impromptu, Informative, Original Oratory, International Extemporaneous, United States Extemporaneous.
Sunday - (must choose 1) - Public Forum, SPAR (Spontaneous Argumentation), Congress and Lincoln Douglas.
College
The College division will follow rules from Phi Rho Pi for speech events, IPDA, and lincoln-douglas debate which can be found here. The College division will follow rules from the National Speech and Debate Association for Public Forum and Congress which can be found here. The college division will follow rules from the National Online Forensics Association for SPAR which can be found here beginning on page 23.
The events offered in the College division include:
Saturday (may enter up to 3) - Dramatic Interpretation, Duo Interpretation, Poetry Interpretation, Program Oral Interpretation, Prose Interpretation, Impromptu, Informative, Persuasive, Communication Analysis, Speech to Entertain, and Extemporaneous.
Sunday - (must choose 1) - IPDA, Public Forum, SPAR (Spontaneous Argumentation), Congress and Lincoln Douglas.
Professional
The College division will follow rules from Phi Rho Pi for most speech events (Duo, Imp, Ext, STE, Poetry, Info, Pers and POI), IPDA, and lincoln-douglas debate which can be found here. The College division will follow rules from the National Speech and Debate Association for some speech events (DI, HI, Storytelling), Public Forum and Congress which can be found here. The college division will follow rules from the National Online Forensics Association for SPAR which can be found here beginning on page 23.
Saturday (may enter up to 3) - Dramatic Interpretation, Duo Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Poetry Interpretation, Program Oral Interpretation, Storytelling, Impromptu, Informative, Persuasive, Speech to Entertain, Extemporaneous.
Sunday - (must choose 1) - IPDA, Public Forum, SPAR (Spontaneous Argumentation), Congress and Lincoln Douglas.
NOTABLE TOURNAMENT RULES AND PROCEDURES:
1. We reserve the right to collapse divisions if entries warrant.
2. Drop-ranks will be applied to all speech events. Competitor advancements to speech elimination rounds will only be scored based on their 3 best preliminary rounds, out of a possible 4 rounds. Therefore there is no penalty for a missed round or technical issue beyond the automatic usage of one’s drop-rank.
3. Competitors may enter up to three speech events, and one debate event or Congress per tournament.
4. Judges are hired on a 1-strike basis, meaning at the first instance of inappropriate or unethical behavior the judge will be removed from the current and all subsequent tournaments. This decision is at the tournament director’s discretion, but PSDA policy dictates judge ban’s should be used liberally to protect students and integrity of the tournament.
5. No person who is currently coaching a PSDA competitor can work as tournament staff. Judges that are alumni from any team competing in the PSDA are not allowed to judge the entire division their former team is entered in. All judges provided by attending teams will be used to judge all divisions their own team is not entered in.
6. All debate entries with a winning record after prelims (3-0 and 2-1) will advance to the elimination rounds. Elimination rounds of debate will award a bronze medal to all non-advancing teams from elimination round 1, then silver and gold medals to the losers and winners of elimination round 2, respectively.