Original Website Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Tarheel Forensic League would like to invite all member schools to the 2026 TFL State Championship to be held March 21st and 22nd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This tournament will be in-person.

Events at this year’s in-person state tournament will be:
Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Public Forum Debate, Congressional Debate, Original Oratory, Extemporaneous Speaking, Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, Duo-Interpretation, Program Oral Interpretation, Impromptu Speaking, Informative Speaking, and Declamation (9th and 10th grades only).

This year students may triple enter between speech events. We will not be able to allow double or triple entry between debate events and speech events.

Students in Open divisions will need to qualify for this tournament through a bid process. Learn more about that at this link. Instructions on how to enter your qualification bids on Tabroom are available at this link.

A novice division will be offered in LD, PF, Congress and all speech events. The novice division of these events is open to any student meeting the definition of a novice. The TFL defines a novice as:

Novice is defined as being in the first year of any forensic competition event or not having had more than two high school tournaments in the previous academic year. Any student with more than two high school tournaments in the previous academic year is ineligible to enter Novice in any event at the State Tournament.

Students in Novice divisions will need to have two legs in that event in the 2025-2026 school year.

There is also no qualification needed for Declamation, but it is limited to 9th and 10th graders.

The Committee is currently voting on a proposal to require all novice entries to have two legs in that event. The system currently requires that you enter those qualifications or us an "at-large" entry. Updates will be sent out prior to March 7th.

Please note that we will be using the MARCH/APRIL Lincoln-Douglas topic and the MARCH Public Forum topic.

Please be sure to review all pages in the right hand column on our registration website. Most of the information you need can be found in the TFL Tournament Manual. We will post announcements and updates on this website, so be sure to check back regularly.

PLEASE NOTE OUR IMPORTANT SUPERVISION RULE:
At minimum, the Head Coach of Record must be present with his or her school for the entire duration of the tournament. If anyone other than the official head coach will be supervising the team, the school must present the TFL Executive Committee a letter to that effect signed by both the head coach and school principal. If any team is found at any time without the coach of record or officially approved adult chaperone on campus during tournament hours, the entire school will be disqualified from the tournament and a letter will be written to the school principal. All teams must be supervised at all times while they are on the host campus.

If at any time you have questions regarding this tournament or if there is anything we can help you with, please do not hesitate to contact TFL Chair, Crawford Leavoy (crawford.leavoy@da.org) at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,
Crawford Leavoy (Durham Academy) - Chair
Keith Pittman (Asheville HS) - Vice Chair & Bidkeeper
Ben Denton (Pinecrest HS) - Teasurer
Angela Segarra (Cuthbertson HS) - Secretary
Michael Bischoff (North Mecklenburg HS)
Megan Butt (Charlotte Latin)
Lynne Coyne (Myers Park HS)
RJ Pellicciotta (Cary Academy) - Bidkeeper
Brian Thompson (Terry Sanford HS)
Thomas Surber (Mountain Heritage HS) - Alternate Member