The Philadelphia Catholic Forensics League (PCFL) Executive Board cordially invites all PCFL Member Schools to participate in the PCFL Varsity Speech & Congress Finals and NCFL Qualifier on Saturday, March 28, 2015 at Holy Ghost Preparatory. Thanks to Tony Figliola, Jerry Colapinto, Christine Seighman and the entire HGP forensics team for hosting this tournament. 

ELIGIBILITY

Each PCFL member school is permitted to send two students in each Varsity Speech Event and two students in Varsity Congress.  In order for a student to compete in a Varsity Speech Event at the PCFL Finals & NCFL Qualifier, a student must have competed in any speech event at a PCFL tournament (Varsity or JV) during the 2014-2015 academic years.  In order for a student to compete in the Varsity Congress at the PCFL Finals & NCFL Qualifier, a student must have competed in Congress at a PCFL tournament (Varsity or JV) during the 2014-2015 academic years.  One PCFL tournament that the student competed at this academic year (in the appropriate event or category) must be listed on the Tabroom.com Registration (but the "Placement" field can be ignored).

REGISTRATION 

Registration opened on February 28, 2015 and will only be accepted via http://PCFLSpeechCongress.Tabroom.com. The deadline for registration is 5:00 PM on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. This deadline is firm.  No additional schools and no additional students will be accepted after this point since we need to begin the process of creating schematics, assigning judges and.  Dropping a student should not occur after registration unless an unforeseen emergency arises.  Dropping a student after the registration deadline does not relieve the school of their judging obligation.

JUDGES

Schools must provide one qualified judge for every two entries or fraction thereof.  No exceptions will be made. All judges are expected to be experienced judges.  Schools CANNOT bring individuals who have never judged a speech event prior to this tournament. This would be terribly unfair to the talented competitors who have worked very hard to represent themselves, their school, and the PCFL, at the Grand National Tournament in May. The PCFL Executive Board reserves the right to question judges who are not recognized and reject judges who cannot prove experience in judging speech events.

Please limit the number of previously affiliated judges or parents. If your judge is either a college freshman (each school may bring only one), or a parent/relative of a student competing, or has a previous school affiliation, or for some other reason cannot judge a particular student in the tournament, please list that in the Notes section when registering the judge. Also, if you can contact some extra, unaffiliated, and qualified judges to help out at this tournament, we would be very grateful. Please identify any unaffiliated judges on the form as well.

Also, please realize that all judges are expected to remain for the duration of the tournament schedule.  If a judge needs to leave early, you will need to provide another judge to cover his/her obligation in the later rounds.

EVENT RULES

As with every PCFL Tournament, we will be using NCFL Rules for all events.  If you do not have a copy of a current NCFL speech ballot or critique sheet, you can download these documents from the NCFL Website (http://www.ncfl.org).   Please make sure that all students are abiding by the rules for their particular events.  We do not like to disqualify students but when rules are violated this may become necessary.

A copy of all Original Orations must be handed in at registration the morning of the tournament along with a signed cover sheet stating the originality of the speech. We would also request that students in interpretation events have with them the original source from which they obtained their selection(s) in addition to a copy of their cutting, just in case there are any questions as to the validity of the piece or where it was published.  These requirements will also be in place at the Grand National Tournament.

We will also be using the current PCFL By Laws to run the tournament and for all decisions regarding scheduling and tabulation. 

FOOD

Snacks and lunch will be provided for coaches and judges. Schools may pre-purchase pizzas for students through the Student Pizza Order tab in the registration area on Tabroom.com.  Plain Pizzas are $12/pie and Pepperoni Pizzas are $13/pie.