01 - Tournament Hired Judging Info

For Judges Wanting To Be Hired:

• Do not email the tournament requesting to be a tournament-hired judge. We will disregard those emails.
• Offer hired judging in the event(s) you're interested in judging. (Directions from Tabroom.)
  • For LD, CX, PF, and WSD, you'll need to include how many rounds of judging you are offering. The max is 6, as that is how many preliminary rounds are offered.
  • LD and CX judging require judges to have prior experience in those events (either as a competitor, coach, or judge).
  • PF judging requires judges to take the NSDA Level 2 PF Judging Course, which is ~15 minutes.
  • Congress judging requires judges to take the NSDA Level 1 and Level 2 Congress Judging Courses, which are ~15 minutes each, and the Parliamentarian Course, which is ~30 minutes.
• When adding your name, our tournament will require you to fill out a Google Form. We use this to gather hiring information needed by the University of Kentucky. It's also used to verify paradigms, judging records, and to contact you regarding hiring.
  • PDF version of the Google Form's questions
• Offering to judge is not a guarantee you will be hired to judge. A tournament administrator will confirm hiring and availablity via email (likely between January 29 and February 12).

For Programs Wanting To Hire:

• Hired judges must be requested from the tournament on Tabroom by Friday, January 29, 2027 at 11:59pm EST. We will not be opening Tabroom’s hiring exchange.

  • If a judge hire request is not submitted by this date, entries are required to provide qualified judges for all uncovered events.

• Judges will cost $75.00 per uncovered round in debate events (LD, CX, PF, WSD) and $75.00 per uncovered entry in Congressional Debate and Speech.

• Once a hired judge request is approved, it is final and non-refundable. You will be responsible for the full fee even if your team later drops, does not compete, or provides a judge.

• We can't guarantee fulfillment of hired judge requests as it is entirely dependent on which judges sign up and are available. Judge requests will be honored in the order they are received and any programs with unfilled requests will be notified approximately two weeks prior to the tournament.

• All programs are expected to provide at least one qualified judge in each event category and division in which they have entries to ensure coverage for elimination rounds.