Coaches and Students,

You are cordially invited to attend The Brawl at the Mall, a Speech and Debate Tournament hosted at LAMP High School on Friday and Saturday, 10 & 11 October.

The schedule is set to offer two full rounds of Congress on Friday, starting at 4:00 pm and finishing that evening. (The legislation used will be uploaded soon.) Lincoln Douglas Debate and Public Forum Debate (being offered for the first time) will also begin on Friday at the same time, but we will have to push Round 4 until Saturday morning (8:00 am). Students may only enter one (1) of these Friday events.

Speech and Big Questions Debate is Saturday only, starting at 10:00 am and finishing that early evening after three rounds and then finals (although not guaranteed we will try to see that all Saturday events should get a 4th round). Speech events will include Duo Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, HumorousInterpretation, Programmed Oral Interpretation, Prose Interpretation, Poetry Interpretation, Original Oratory, Informative Speaking, Impromptu, and Extemporaneous Speaking. Students may double enter any two (2) speech events, even if you are competing in LD or PF.

In an effort to offer expanded Debate opportunities, there will be both a preliminary school cap and preliminary total entry event cap for both BQ, LD, and PF. All schools are permitted to have four (4) debate entries in each of BQ, LD, or PF. If you have more, they can go on the waitlist. On September 29 (almost two weeks before the tournament), if we have the room, I will start accepting entries off the waitlist. You can still continue to register up until the final date of registration, but spots will probably be very limited after September 29, so register early!

Our tournament serves as a qualifying tournament for all the speech events for the TOC in Kentucky provided the numbers support said bid.

We do not have a reliable judge hire pool for this tournament, so every effort should be made to provide your full allotment. We do not wish to prevent anyone from attending based solely upon judges, but it is a real and influential consideration for this tournament.

We hope this tournament continues to give students a chance to grow in Congressional Debate as well as the different Speech Events, two areas of growth we've been focusing on since 2020 in Alabama. We also think the format is advantageous for schools that only wish to attend one day. There will be no need to arrange overnight lodging if your school opts for one day over the other. Of course, we encourage all schools to attend both days given how much experience your students and team can get with this schedule.

We look forward to your considering joining us on that weekend!

Jordan Berry & Luke Craig

Update: Due to the late nature of the NSDA's wording change for the BQ topic, we will still be using the old/original wording of the resolution: "Resolved: Religious belief is a prerequisite for morality." The LD and PF topics will continue to be the normal ones for the month of October.