SpeechWire Tournament Services - Forensics Tournament Software

The Richards Speech Team proudly invites you to the eighth annual Saturday Morning Smackdown! The “blizzard” intervened last year, but we are back, and more excited than ever. The tournament will be held on Saturday, January 18th, 2025 at Richards High School (Oak Lawn). Prepare your students for the State Series by competing at the year's most electrifying speech tournament.

The tournament will consist of three rounds, where competitor's in each event will compete twice, with one round double-judged. It is very important that your competitors are aware of this going in. One of the biggest issues we have had when running this format, is students not understanding what time they need to perform.

All teams max entries per event are currently set at 4. If you wish to add another entry beyond 3, you may add them to the waiting list. In order to stay within our limit of rooms, we are going to hold at a hard cap of 4 for every event. Once again, you may enter students on the waitlist, and I will make any decisions based on the numbers we are seeing in the weeks leading up to the tournament. I'd like to do everything in my power to avoid a 4 round tournament, and to avoid rounds of more than 7.

We will be running both a Final Round and a Next-In Final Round.

Because of our format, it is important that we have 1 judge for every 5 entries. No school needs to bring more than 10. This would mean

1-7 entries - 1 judge
8-12 entries - 2 judges
13-17 entries - 3 judges
18-22 entries - 4 judges
23-27 entries - 5 judges
28-32 entries - 6 judges
33-37 entries - 7 judges
38-42 entries - 8 judges
43-47 entries - 9 judges
48+ entries - 10 judges

We will have a full concession setup available.

Radio and Extemp will each prep once for prelims, and again for finals. Each team's top two scores in all events decides the top five Smackdown Team finishes.

The fee system is set as follows:
0-28 entries: $175
29-42 entries: $200
43+ entries: $225

More information will be available as the date approaches. Please email connor.reynolds@chsd218.org if you have any other questions. Please also let me know if you have a wrestler request. I will do my best to honor this

Other details and information should be available on Speechwire.

Connor Reynolds
Email address: connor.reynolds@chsd218.org
Phone number: 708-519-0280