Dear Middle School Speech and Debate Coach:

We would like to invite you to Olle Middle School’s fourteenth annual speech, drama, and debate tournament. Olle Middle School is located in southwest Houston at 9200 Boone Road, Houston, Texas 77099.

Preliminary debate rounds will occur on Friday, February 6, with debate elimination rounds occurring on Saturday, February 7. All other events will occur on Saturday only! If your school is not debating, you do not have to attend the tournament on Friday, February 6.

Eligibility

This tournament is open to all accredited public and private schools (schools that students attend for compulsory attendance purposes).

We have also invited the following club-based entries to participate in our tournament:

Hua Xia Chinese School—Katy

Katy Speech and Debate Academy

Vallabh Vidya Mandir

These are the only club-based entries we will accept.

If a student competes for one of these club-based entries, and their accredited school is attending our tournament, that student must compete for their accredited school. Students who violate this rule will be disqualified.

Deadlines

Registration will open at 8:00 am on Wednesday, December 3, 2025. Once we reach capacity, new schools will not be able to register. Traditionally, our tournament fills quickly, so we encourage you to register as soon as possible.

Because our campus is small, we must limit the size of our tournament. To give schools an equal opportunity to enter their students, we will implement the following procedures:

• When registration opens on Wednesday, December 3, each school will be initially limited to...

• 8 entries per event in individual events.

• 6 entries in Congressional Debate.

• 5 entries each in Lincoln-Douglas and public forum debate.

• 4 entries in world schools debate.

• After Friday, December 19, per-school entry limits will be increased if we have space.

New entries will not be accepted after 6:00 pm on Friday, January 23, 2026.

The drop deadline is 6:00 pm on Friday, January 30. Drops after this deadline will forfeit the original entry fee. You can make name substitutions during registration.

Judging

Since our tournament is limited in size, we focus on providing the best judging possible. We believe that quality, constructive judging is crucial to the development of middle school performers. Consequently, our judging pool consists of trained adults from our faculty, our alumni, and our community, as well as carefully selected high school students who have successfully competed in high school speech and debate.

This year, we are asking each school to provide at least one qualified judge. These judges will primarily be used during preliminary debate rounds on Friday and individual event finals on Saturday.

Additional Information

A plethora of important tournament information may be found to your right. For example, event rules may be found by clicking the Events & Divisions tab and clicking on each event.

Entry Fees

We are publishing initial tournament information in June of 2025, and we do not know if our award costs and Tabroom costs will increase next year. Consequently, all posted entry fees are subject to change. We will determine our final entry fees by December 1, 2025.

Questions

If you have any questions, you may contact George Tennison at (281) 983-8455 or gttennis@ga.aliefisd.net. We look forward to seeing you in February.

Sincerely,

Mr. George Tennison—Director of Speech and Debate