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BEST GREETINGS FROM NUEVA DEBATE!

We hope your school will attend the 9th annual Nueva Parli Invitational, to be held live and in person at the Nueva Upper School on Friday, January 9 (Varsity only) and Saturday, January 10 (both Novice and Varsity) 2026.

ELIGIBILITY– We will accept middle school teams and/or high school teams. A high school debater may debate with a middle school debater from their affiliated middle school, and vice versa. We will accept hybrid teams if we receive written authorization from both school administrators. Otherwise, students must attend the same school and must compete as authorized representatives of the school they attend. Coaches may place teams in either the Novice or Varsity division using their reasonable discretion. All teams must be accompanied by verifiably official adult chaperones. We do not accept club teams or teams from for-profit organizations.

REGISTRATION is through tabroom.com. All entries will be waitlisted pending tournament approval. We are setting an initial limit of four teams per school per division and lift this limit on Dec 25. We expect to be a bit more space-limited this year, so register early!

JUDGES– Schools owe one judge per two entries. Very experienced high school parli debaters may judge in the junior division, with prior approval. All judges must have linked tabroom.com accounts, and we hope that open division judges will have posted paradigms. A limited number of hired judges may be procured (through our Procurement Office) for $200 in the novice division and $275 in the varsity division. We expect to have some excellent guest judges. If you know of people we should hire, please let us know.

RULES -- We will use CHSSA rules with the following exceptions:

1. Preparing with teammates is allowed.

2. We won’t consider protests on the basis of competitors asking judges to look up evidence to verify it (and judges doing so).

VENUE -- The Nueva Upper School is at 131 East 28th Avenue, San Mateo CA. 94403. It is a block from the Hillsdale Caltrain station. Nueva also has a K-8 campus in Hillsborough. Don't go there; that would be wrong.

FEES - $85 per varsity team and $65 per novice team; judge hires for $200 in the novice division and $275 in the varsity division; fees are frozen on January 3. Checks should be payable to The Nueva School, sent to

ATTN: Julie Herman
The Nueva School
131 E. 28th Avenue
San Mateo CA 94403.

They are due not later than registration time.

LOGISTICS -- The school will be accessible for entry at 3:40 pm on Friday and 7:30 pm on Saturday. There will be free dinner provided on Friday and lunch on Saturday, in addition to snacks throughout. Because of space constraints, we may substantially alter our Novice schedule (see schedule section below). We will make the call on this alteration by January 3 and communicate on that date which schedule Novice will use.

ETC.-- The parli topic committee will be Nueva parli staff plus whoever else we can trick into service. We will announce a topic area for two of our rounds not later than December 30.

Feel free to contact us with questions. We very much look forward to hosting you!

Julie et al