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Welcome to the Professional Speech and Debate Association (PSDA) Online Fall Classic Tournament! We are excited to have you join us on Saturday October 7th and Sunday October 8th for a weekend of competitive speech and debate events.

All rounds will be held online through our tournament hosting platform, Tabroom.com. Saturday October 7th will feature four preliminary rounds of speech events, followed by a final round for the top competitors in each event. Sunday October 8th will feature three preliminary rounds of debate events, followed by two elimination rounds, as well as two preliminary rounds of Congress and a final round.

We offer competition for all ages and skill levels, with divisions for Elementary, Junior, High School, College, and Professional. Each school grade division has an open and novice division to accommodate a range of experience, and the professional division is open to anyone over the age of 18. The professional division offers cash prizes to top competitors, calculated as a percentage of total entries in each event. This means that the more competitors in an event, the bigger the cash prize pool!

We believe that the job of being a coach is hard enough as it is, and we strive to make things as easy as possible for our coaches and competitors. That's why we keep entry fees as low as possible and never charge nuisance fees. We also believe that "punishable by fine" means "legal for a price," and so we have implemented a policy where if a team collectively misses over 20% of their ballots, their students who would have 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 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 who 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 are excited to have you join us for the Online Fall Classic Tournament, and we can't wait to see all of the great competition that will take place. Please visit prosda.com for more information and to register for the tournament, or register directly at Tabroom.com.

We look forward to seeing you at the tournament!

NOTABLE TOURNAMENT RULES

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. SPAR is the only debate style event held on Saturday, and may be counted as one of the 3 speech events so students may be triple entered in SPAR and up to two speech events

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.

7. Impromptu at all levels and divisions will include 4 prompts. A concrete noun, and abstract noun, a fun fact, and a quotation. Competitors may choose which prompt form is most suitable for their abilities and educational goals. This is intended to increase accessibility for students participating in a second language or with cultural backgrounds that put them at a disadvantage with particular prompt styles.