Tournament Info!

Falcon First Tournament and former parking-lot disaster-obstruction tournament, plus Bryan Whytney Memorial Tournament.

*a beard-friendly tournament since, like, 20 years ago, now run by coaches Hair and Harris and team that is hair-less.

The Clearfield High School Speech and Debate Team would like to invite you to the first Novice/Open tournament of the season to be held on Saturday, October 5thndt.

Definition of a novice competitor: For the purpose of this competition, a novice competitor is someone who has never competed in a debate tournament in a prior year. (If your student was in a class, but NEVER competed before, they are still a novice!) Novice competitors may compete in ANY category.

Definition of an “Open” Competitor: Anyone else, who HAS competed before. If you competed in a tournament, ever, that’s you. Novices can compete in the Open-class, however the Open-class competitors may not compete at a Novice level, because that’s weird.

Definition of a Tournament: a gathering of a group of close-by schools to have a friendly, first-of-the-year/break-in-your-novices, friendly evening involving some speeches, some debates, good food, and some rad trophies. This is a *4 round (round 1 can be used as practice to teach novices and judges) tournament to teach new coaches, judges, and let your students get enough competition to mean something!

NOVICE EVENTS:

Congress

Extemporaneous Speaking (National and Foreign will be combined)

Impromptu

Public Forum

LD (note that only the Open topic is used)

Open EVENTS:

Congress

Extemporaneous Speaking (National and Foreign will be combined)

Impromptu

Oratory

Combined Interps

POI/Info

Public Forum

LD

Spar

Debate Topics:

Lincoln-Douglas Debate – 2026 September/October Topic

Resolved: Outer space colonization is a moral imperative.

Public Forum Debate – 2026 September/October Topic

Resolved: The United States federal government should enact a moratorium on hyperscale data center construction.

Note:

Double entries allowed in speech events only that allow it (e.g. Extemp and Impromptu), NOT allowed for debaters/Congress students (including Spar: it’s a Debate event). No double-Extemp entries (ever!). Novice students are welcome to compete in any open event if they wish.

Food: We’ll have “pizza” ‘cuz it’s cheap. $1/Slice and a water!

Congress – We will be using the legislation found on the UDCA website (listed at the end). Orders of the day will be amended to allow for sponsorship speeches.

We do not/have not ever run the novice-LD topic. It’s always the OPEN topic (see above), so please make note. (p.s.: the Novice topic is lame).

Extemp topics will be pulled from current events, and many of them from UDCA/NSDA. Novice topics will be slightly-easier variants of these.

Impromptu topics will be theme-based, possibly funny at times, but mostly just awesome. Typical format: people, current events, quotes, and abstracts, by round.

The Congress docket is posted as of several weeks ago on the website.

Combined Interps and Poi/Info are a collapsed-events this year, and while that might seem odd, it’s to help promote awareness of these events and help create a safe place for students to try them out early in the season.

SpAr will be a returning event for us at Falcon. For those familiar with it, we’ll be running it flighted, since rounds will take about 20 minutes. Think of SpAr at Falcon First as more debate-oriented: topics will be more serious after round 1. Times are new this year, so be aware that it is as-follows:

2 mins mandatory prep for all participants, following announcement of topic.

3 mins Affirmative Constructive

3 mins NC

3 mins Cross - Examination (grand)

2 mins Affirmative Rebuttal

2 mins NR

1 min Aff Final Focus

1 min NFF

Awards: 1^stin every event gets a trophy, and 2-5^th gets a ribbon. We also award a Sweepstakes trophy!!

Judges: You will need to provide one judge for every six competitors in Individual Events (Extemp, Impromptu, Oratory, etc.), one for every three entries in Debate Events (Public Forum, LD), and one for every eight participants in Congress. We will allow Varsity students to judge, provided that they constitute no more than half of your judging pool, and that they only judge novices since we want a good mix of feedback for all competitors (we’ll mix Varsity with new judges to help train everyone).

Wifi will be allowed, details will be at the tournament for connections to it.

Ye schedule is as follows:

Registration: 7:00-7:30 Library

Judges Meeting: 7:30-8:00 Library

Draw: 7:30

Congress: 8:00-11:00 Session #1

12:00-3:00 Session #2

All other events: 8:00-9:30 Round #1

9:30-11:00 Round #2

12:00-1:30 Round #3

1:30-3:00 Round #4

4:00-4:01 Awards, spewed

I realize that some of you will be traveling some distance; however, we MUST start the tournament on time—no exceptions. If there’s a traffic hangup or you need to sell limbs to buy diesel fuel, please text Lorin.

Entry Details:

In trying to keep the tournament fun, we encourage students to list a school-appropriate French pseudonym for themselves if they’d like to, and by which we’ll read off any awards and accolades. (You can input these into Tabroom).

As always, please feel free to e-mail or call me with any concerns/questions.

You can contact me at: lorharris@dsdmail.net, or him at jhair@dsdmail.net the school at (801) 402-8200.