Howells-Dodge Consolidated High School

Jaguar Jabber Invitational

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Greetings, speech coaches!  I am pleased to invite your team to the Jaguar Jabber Invitational to be held at Howells-Dodge Consolidated High School located in Howells on Wednesday, January 20th. It is our goal to feature a completely in-person competition. In order to allow this to happen, MASKS will be required by all coaches and judges at all times. Participants must also wear masks at all times except during their own performance. They will be socially distanced to allow for this to occur, but may opt to continue wearing their masks during performance. Also, we will not be allowing ANY spectators for our contest. The only individuals in the performance rooms will be the judge and the participating members of that round.

We will be accepting online registrations at SpeechWire. We will be using SpeechWire to facilitate the tournament and all results will be available online on the SpeechWire website. 

The entry deadline will be Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 6:30 p.m. Feel free to enter the students prior to the deadline and make changes up until the deadline on the 13th. 

Registration will be held in the commons area, right inside the front doors of the high school. Registration will begin at 7:15 a.m. with the first round beginning at 8:00 a.m. We ask that you monitor the situation and maintain distance between your team and any others entering the building. Students will be able to congregate in the gym in the area designated for your team which is where the awards ceremony will take place. 

Our goal is to feature separate JV and Varsity level competition. A student may be entered as a JV competitor in one event while competing in Varsity in another but please be sure to indicate which division the event should be included.  Within each division, it is our goal to have students compete in two preliminary rounds with the top six individuals/groups advancing into the final round. (If numbers become an issue, we may need to modify to a single preliminary round with two judges, then finals situation.) Medals will be awarded to all finalists. Team sweepstakes will be determined using final round placings only. 

Students may be triple entered in the competition. Please make sure your extempers understand that they MUST be on time for extemp. Events will be flighted according to entries received and rooms available in different time slots. This year, we are forced to incur limits on the number of entries within our tournament. We are going to attempt to have 4 entries per team per event. If you have additional entries beyond that number, please email me with those. We will do our best to accommodate those entries, but we guarantee nothing. When entering students in duet and OID, please be sure to list full names for all competitors on one line (1 line=1 entry). 

Extemp: Extemporaneous materials will be checked prior to the first round of competition. Students may use both traditional print files and electronic files. Students will not be allowed to connect to the internet during extemp preparation; any electronic articles must be downloaded to the competitor's computer prior to the tournament. The extempers will not be allowed to plug in their laptops due to lack of available outlets. Students may be able to charge laptop computers between rounds.

Concessions (in some format) will be offered in the commons area throughout the tournament.

You will need to provide one judge for every SIX ENTRIES. Uncovered judging slots will be charged $12 per uncovered entry.  Please be sure that your judges have a way to time the presenters and are aware that they need to be available for all final rounds. A hospitality room for coaches, judges, and bus drivers should be available throughout the day. 

Fees are $7.00 per entry, individual or group.  Fees should be paid upon registration on the morning of the tournament, if not sooner. There will not be any refunds for drops after the January 13th, 6:30 p.m. deadline.

Last Minute Drops: For those last minute drops (night before or morning of), we would appreciate as much advance notice as possible to allow the tournament to run as smoothly as possible. You can either e-mail drops to tsindelar@hdcjags.org or text/call them into 402-750-7697.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

We do hope you will join us for our Jaguar Jabber Invitational!

Traci Sindelar

Howells-Dodge Consolidated Speech