SpeechWire Tournament Services - Forensics Tournament Software

Dear Coaches and Friends,

We are pleased to invite you to attend the 2022 Lincoln North Star Beaus and Belles of the Bayou Tournament. The competition will be held on Saturday, February 12th, 2022, and we hope you will consider joining us! This year we are pleased to be NIETOC National Qualifying tournament so we are hopeful that we can extend as many bids as we can that day!

ONLINE ENTRY:

Entries will only be accepted online via www.speechwire.com. The deadline for entries is Wednesday, February 9th at 5:30 PM. If you have any drops/adds after that time, please email or text them to me. We will be charging $8 per entry and please make the checks out to "Lincoln North Star Speech Booster Club."

JUDGES:

You will need to provide one judge for every five entries or pay $15 for each uncovered entry. We will be using E-Ballots this year so please make sure that judges bring a device that is capable of typing ballots in rounds (laptop or tablet w/ their chargers). Please avoid using phones as a device to judge on if possible. LNS, unfortunately, does not have extra chromebooks to check out to judges so PLEASE make sure your judges are prepared. Please make sure to communicate to judges to be in rounds on time and to make sure that only judge elements of speeches that are actually rules/guidelines of the event, not just social norms of speech. Please take a look at the NSAA rule book for more guidance. Some students may choose to speak with their masks on; that is their choice and they should NOT be penalized for that choice.

COVID-rules:

At this point, we don't know what mid-February will look like but we do ask that all participants, coaches, judges, and spectators be masked while they are in the building. Students may take their masks off while they are the active speaker, but that is entirely their choice. While in large public areas (cafeteria, hallways, restrooms), please continue to wear your masks appropriately. We will have some masks available at registration if you need them.

EVENTS:

The following events will be offered: Informative*, Original Oratory*, Extemporaneous*, Entertainment, Humorous Interpretation*, Dramatic Interpretation*, Poetry, Program of Oral Interpretation*, Duet/Duo*, and Oral Interpretation of Drama. Students may triple enter. A Top Novice award will be given in all individual events, as well. Events with an * are NIETOC events.

ROUNDS: We have adjusted to a flighted tournament to accomodate for the limited space in our building.

Registration/Check in will open officially at 8

Round 1A: 9:00

Round 1B: 10:30

Round 2A: 12:00

Round 2B: 1:30

Finals A: 2:30

Finals B: 3:00

Awards: ASAP (most likely around 5)

EVENT RULES/NOTES:

- EXT will run a 30 min prep

- INF will run a 10 minute time-limit: your judges may see scripts written to the 8:00 or the 10:00 limit: please ask that they are flexible when considering time as a factor in ranking

- Duet and Duo will be run together with a 12 min time limit (please be aware that NIETOC has a 10 min limit)

- OID will run at 15 minutes (please note that Class A has a 10 minute cap)

- Rules regarding script/notecard use and time limits of events will be based off NSAA guidelines

- We follow the NIETOC rule regarding overtime: Speakers exceeding this time limit by more than 30 seconds shall not be ranked first--do NOT penalize speakers beyond this!

CONTACT INFO:

You may reach me via cell phone at 402-649-8648, or via e-mail: afinn@lps.org. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

We look forward to hosting you on February 12th!

Alison Finn-Couch, LNS Speech Head Coach

Zach Nelson, LNS Speech Assistant Coach