The Pattonville High School speech and debate team is proud to invite you and your team to the 50th annual Randy Pierce Winter Classic. This tournament will be held in-person on December 12th and 13th. We are thrilled to announce that we are again a NIETOC qualifier tournament, and we plan to offer ALL MSHSAA and NSDA events, pending entry numbers.

 

This year, we will offer competition at three levels in Debate (Novice, Reg, and Champ) in LD and PF, and two levels (Novice, Champ) in Policy, and two levels in some Speech and Congress (Novice, Champ). Interp events will offer only one level (Champ) due to the much lower number of entries in the past. For Novice events, the student or team must be entirely in their first year of any high school speech and debate competition to be entered.  This division is about supporting our new students, and I will not hesitate to DQ people to preserve this. For Reg Debate, please enter post-novices, or novices looking to take a step up. No one in Reg should have made the state or national tournaments for that event, or be in their third or fourth year in that event.   Novices cannot use Kritiks and must use a case from the following novice case areas: Early Warning Systems, Renewable Energy, Research Cooperation, and Oil and Gas Drilling. 

 

We saw a lot of interest last year, and in the hope of having spots for as many schools as possible, we will restrict schools to 5 entries per event and division. All speech, including congress, will have 3 prelim rounds, breaking to finals. All debate will have four prelim rounds and will break to either semis (Policy) or quarterfinals (PF/LD). The idea is more rounds for students who want and need practice. 

 

Awards will be given to top six in any speech event, including Congress. Debate will have awards for all breaks.

 

Students need to respect the classrooms they enter and return them to how they found them previously.  We had teachers mad at us for rooms that were rearranged and furniture broken.  Please instruct your students to use furniture appropriately, and DO NOT MOVE teacher podiums.  The only things that should move temporarily, are student desks. If we have teachers come back on Monday to messy rooms, it makes it much harder to get them to continue to allow us to use their rooms!

 

Students should remain in the cafeteria and commons area when not competing.  Under absolutely no circumstances should students be in one of the gyms. Teams found to be repeatedly in violation of this will not be invited back next year.

 

The Pattonville PTO will be operating a concession stand and will have a card reader! 

 

We are asking that coaches be available to judge as needed, especially on Friday for debate round 1 when a lot of parent judges may not be available yet. We ask that you have 1 judge available minimum, and an additional for every 8 debate entries and 12 speech entries. Parent judges are welcome, please have any of your judges fill out the linked form. Please register yourself as a judge to help us in that regard. Any varsity members who do not advance are welcome to contact us during the tournament to be added to the pool. Please remember that students must be in their second year of competition with at least 150 NSDA points to judge.

 

Please register through SpeechWire by Tuesday, December 2nd at 5:00pm. No additional entries will be accepted after this time. Names can still be changed after this time, and drops can be made, but no switching of divisions or new entries after this time. If, at this time, entry numbers are low, we will possibly collapse things, but the goal will always be to preserve the novice division and your student's ability to get practice. We will also evaluate space and waitlisted entries at this time. Preference will be given with fairness in mind, meaning if multiple schools each have waitlisted entries, and only two spots open, they will not be awarded to the same school.

 

(vr24)